


Ghost in the Machine

by quartzguts



Series: bad things happen (mostly to noct) [6]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: ??? - Freeform, Abuse, Assassination Plot(s), Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Denailing, Fat Shaming, Gen, Human Experimentation, Humiliation, Kidnapping, Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Panic Attacks, Politics, Sexual Harassment, Tasers, Torture, Whump, non consensual nudity, not promtis but if you want to read it that way it is a-okay, now with added comfort, very bad things happening to clone babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:13:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 49,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23804416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quartzguts/pseuds/quartzguts
Summary: Prompto stares down at the letter in his hands without comprehension. He reads over the words again and again."Kindly lend me some of your time. Although I am certain you have wondered about me sparingly over the years, as I have thought of you, I doubt you remember my face. The last I saw of you, you were but an infant.My name is Verstael Besithia—your biological father."Prompto gets a letter from a guy claiming to be his father. He decides to go to Niflheim to meet the guy, under the impression he'll be allowed to return to Insomnia whenever he wants.Verstael has other plans.
Relationships: Prompto Argentum & Noctis Lucis Caelum, Prompto Argentum & Verstael Besithia
Series: bad things happen (mostly to noct) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1550269
Comments: 95
Kudos: 112
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	1. Blood in the River

**Author's Note:**

> this is another chapter fic because i have learned they're actually super fun to write  
> this is also my first bad things happen fic where the bad things are not happening to noctis! this time it's prompto's turn to suffer ;) the prompt is "kidnapping."  
> i'll be adding additional tags/warnings as new chapters are posted, so keep a look out. the rating is also subject to change if it proves necessary  
> so it's absolutely clear: vers in this fic is Hot Young Vers, because i said so

Prompto stares down at the letter in his hands without comprehension. He reads over the words again and again, occasionally picking the envelope back up to look at it. The words _First Magitek Production Facility, Niflheim,_ are stamped onto the upper left. The recipient is written in the center in bold, black ink. _Prompto Argentum._ The letter is undoubtedly meant for him, yet he still finds himself needing to triple check.

He turns back to the letter, takes a deep breath, and tries to read it again, hoping he’ll be able to understand it this time.

_P. Argentum,_

_Kindly lend me some of your time. Although I am certain you have wondered about me sparingly over the years, as I have thought of you, I doubt you remember my face. The last I saw of you, you were but an infant._

_My name is Verstael Besithia—your biological father. I have been informed you are currently living in Insomnia with a set of adoptive parents. I understand that your circumstances may cause you to feel unwanted, so I implore you to listen to what I have to say._

_It was never my intention to give you up for adoption. I am a researcher and innovator, and was working at a certain research institute in Niflheim nineteen years ago. Lucian forces attacked us; you were lost to me in the chaos. I only learned recently that the Lucians had absconded with you back to their country instead of butchering you. I have spent the last several months working to ensure your return home._

_While travel between Lucis and Niflheim is quite difficult at the moment, I have arranged for you to be granted ambassadorial privileges on behalf of the Niflheimr government. This will permit you to travel to Galdin Quay, board a ferry to enter Accordo, and take the trains from Tenebrae to Gralea. I expect the trip should take only a few weeks._

_My telephone number is printed below. I ask that you call with your decision at your earliest convenience. I understand that you have lived your whole life apart from your true home and family, and it may be difficult for you to decide to return. I assure you, however, that it will be worth it._

_Best regards,_

_V. Besithia_

As promised, the phone number is printed below, in the same neat letters the rest of the page is scripted in. Prompto squints down at them. His own handwriting is so messy by comparison. How does his father have such good script?

His father. His _father._ The word seems so foreign. He has a father, technically, but his adoptive parents are so often away it feels like he’s been on his own for forever. Even now they’re off somewhere in the Lucian countryside for business, or maybe they’ve taken a vacation in Altissia; they’re gone so often for so many reasons, he can’t even keep it straight anymore.

But this? This is his dad. His biological, blood-related dad, who, if he’s telling the truth, actually wanted him. And why wouldn’t he? He’s seen the way dads act with their sons. The King loves Noctis more than anything, and Lord Clarus is always cracking jokes with Gladio. Ignis’s uncle constantly praises him for jobs well done. Prompto’s hands start shaking. He has a _father_ , a real one, and that father wants him to come home.

He feels like he’ll explode if he keeps turning the idea in circles in his head. He drops the letter on the kitchen table and scrambles for his phone.

He doesn’t know how many times it rings. He’s too busy staring at the letter on the table, the name, and the phone number. When the line finally clicks, and Prompto hears Noctis’s voice, he jolts in shock.

“Hey, Noct, buddy, you won’t believe what just happened!” he shouts.

_“—leave a message if it’s something important.”_ Noctis’s voicemail ends, and there’s a long beep. Prompto stands and listens to the crackle of nothing on the line, the excitement dripping out of him like water from a leaking cup.

He hangs up the phone and sets it back on the counter. Of course. He forgot that Noctis told him not to call before five on weekdays. He has royal duties to deal with; they aren’t in high school anymore, and Prompto can’t just call Noctis whenever he wants to. He should’ve remembered.

He contemplates calling Ignis or Gladio, but decides against it. They’ll be busy, too. He needs to talk to someone, though, because all these feelings are making him confused and unsure, and he’s never been good at talking things out on his own. He’d gotten so much better after he made friends with Noctis and had someone to soundboard his emotions off of. Prompto wonders if he’s happier now that he works full-time at the Citadel, so he doesn’t have to listen to his ramblings anymore.

He picks his phone back up and scrolls through his contacts. It’s a short list; just Noctis, Ignis, Gladio, Cor, his boss, and his parents. He is absolutely not going to call Cor the Immortal to gush about his emotions, his boss doesn’t like him, and his parents won’t care. They might even get upset. They got like that a few times while he was in elementary school; he’d ask why they never came to the science fair or art festival like everyone else’s parents did, and they’d call him ungrateful and insist that they did the best they could. That he was just being difficult and refusing to get attached to them because he was adopted.

They were always insecure about that. He shouldn’t talk to them about his bio dad. They’ll only get upset.

His gaze floats back over to the letter. It’s sitting _right there,_ with the phone number on it. Maybe it’s not right to bother his bio dad— _his dad_ —with this, but hey, he might understand. After all, they’re going through the same thing right now. He might be the _only_ person who could understand.

He taps out the number and hits call before he can change his mind. As the cell rings, Prompto worries he’s going to be left to voicemail again. Then the phone clicks and a voice answers.

_“Besithia speaking,”_ is the first thing his dad says to him. His voice is so much deeper than Prompto expected, and somewhat scratchy with age. It definitely doesn’t sound anything like his own.

He breathes in deep. “This is Prompto Argentum.”

There’s a sound on the other end of the line, like a chair is being shoved over a tile floor. Like his dad is standing up in shock. _“Son.”_

“Hi,” Prompto says, mentally slapping himself for not being able to come up with anything better. “I mean, um…”

_“I assume this means you received my letter,”_ Verstael says. _“Have you thought about my offer?”_

“I haven’t—I mean—this is all kind of sudden?” Prompto laughs nervously. He’s talking to his dad. His _actual dad._ Holy shit. “Like, I’m not really sure what to say.”

_“Worry not,”_ his dad says, and Prompto feels a wave of relief wash over him. _“It’s perfectly acceptable for you to be confused right now, son.”_

Prompto’s adoptive father has never called him _son_ so casually. “So, um, what exactly do you want me to do…?”

_“I would prefer it if you made your way to Niflheim immediately,”_ he says. _“I’m barred from traveling to Lucis given my status, and I_ so _want to see you.”_

“Your status?” Prompto asks, slowly sitting down at the kitchen table. He picks up the envelope again. _First Magitek Production Facility._ Magitek, as in the unholy magic technology that Niflheim uses to fight the war. He'd been so distracted before that he hadn't really thought about it. The hair on the back of Prompto’s neck raises.

_“Yes. You see, I am one of the top researchers of magitek in the empire. The current stock of MTs fighting for the glory of His Radiance are my work. As you can expect, I’m not the type of person who would be permitted to visit Lucis on holiday.”_

Prompto’s heart rate picks up. He always knew he was Niflheimr, has tried his best to hide it from Noctis, Ignis, and Gladio, but this is something else entirely. He’s the son of the guy who _invented_ MTs, who’s responsible for all the death and destruction of the current wave of war. His grip on his phone tightens. He should have realized the moment he read the words _Magitek Production Facility._ He never should have called.

His dad sighs—the sound startles Prompto out of his building panic. _“I am merely working to further the glory of my homeland and reach new heights of scientific achievement. It is no different from what the Lucian royals do with their Crystal. Come now, won’t you say something?”_

The comparison of Noctis with Niflheim’s so-called 'mad scientists' has Prompto hovering a finger over the _end call_ button.

_“Prompto,”_ his dad says gently. _“Believe me, I know how hard this must be for you to hear. You were raised in Lucis, after all. The Insomnian media has often been biased against our homeland. I know a bit of the propaganda that has been shoved down your throat over the years; your confusion is quite natural. But you are_ my son _, and you are of Niflheimr blood. You don’t belong in Insomnia. If you would just return home for a little while, I believe I could dispel some of the illusions you’ve been living under.”_

_You don’t belong._ “...just a ‘little while’?” Prompto says. “You mean you don’t want me to come back permanently?”

_“Only if you want to.”_

Prompto has never had a choice about where to live, what to do. His adoptive parents refuse to let him move out. They have full access to the money in his bank account. They have final say over if and when he gets to leave the city, and they’ve never let him do it before. He’d even had to stay home over the summer when Noctis, Ignis, and Gladio went to Galdin Quay for vacation. He definitely won’t be allowed to go to Niflheim—except his _real_ dad is not only saying he can, but that it’s his own choice, and if he decides he doesn’t like it he can always come back to Insomnia.

_Could_ he, though? He’s treading thin ice by even having been born in Niflheim. What happens if he visits? Would he ever be allowed at Noctis’s side again? Could he keep a secret that huge all to himself?

Has he already crossed the line by having this conversation?

“Can I think about it some more?” Prompto asks.

_“Of course,”_ is the immediate reply. _“I never imagined you would call this soon. Just being able to hear your voice is enough for now.”_

“Right,” Prompto says, desperate to end the conversation. This talk has only made him more confused, more unsure of what he should do. He wants it _over_.

_“Phone me again soon,”_ his dad says.

“Can I just text you?”

There’s a pause. _“Are you more comfortable with that mode of communication?”_

“Yeah. Just, talking on the phone is kinda stressful, y’know?”

_“I do not. But if you prefer it, I don’t mind texting.”_

Prompto sighs in relief. “Thanks.”

_“But of course. I’ll speak with you later.”_

“Yeah, sure.” Prompto hangs up. He’s left alone in his kitchen, staring at his dimly lit phone. Sunlight streams in from outside. The clock hands move slowly, as if time itself is struggling to move forward.

It’ll still be a few hours before he can call Noctis and talk to him. He settles for sitting on the living room sofa and turning on the TV. The first channel he sees is a news outlet; they’re talking about the war, as always. He immediately turns it off, buries his face in his hands, and groans.

No matter what happens next, no one can find out who he really is. Everyone in Insomnia hates Nifs; most immigrants keep their nationality under wraps, lest they become victims to harassment and hate crimes. Prompto’s done his best to hide his heritage, not that it’s difficult to do so. He doesn’t remember Niflheim at all.

But if he goes, that’ll change. He’ll have those memories, those connections. Prompto’s eyes widen. He might _already_ have those connections. His dad said he’s been granted ‘ambassadorial privileges’. Does that mean he’s registered with the Insomnian government? Does the King know who he is?

He can’t stay inside anymore. He grabs his keys, his phone, and, after a moment of hesitation, the letter and its envelope. His parents won’t be back for months, but he doesn’t want to take any chances. What if someone breaks into his house while he’s out and sees it? What if Noctis drops by randomly? He has a key. Prompto had given it to him ages ago while they were still in school.

He tears out of his apartment and starts running. He’s used to running when he’s confused, or upset; this is something he knows intimately, something he feels comfortable in. The world is empty except for his steady breathing, the sound of his tennis shoes on concrete, the feel of the wind against his face. The sun beating down on his bare arms. He runs past his usual route, though the park near his house, past stores and houses and bus stops. This is the city he was raised in, he thinks as he looks up to the skyscrapers stretching high. This is his home, the only home he’s ever had.

He only jogs back to his house once the sun is sinking, the light scattering into little yellow sparkles as it shines through the Wall. He opens the door to an empty home. It’s a bit early for dinner, but he gets out the salad ingredients anyway. Stress eating has always been a weakness of his. Usually he'd take pictures to distract himself, but he can't scrounge up the motivation. Despite the beautiful sunset outside, his mood’s positively stormy.

He’s chopping up a cucumber when his phone rings. The knife slips in his hand and slices his thumb, eliciting a yelp. Prompto jams it into his mouth, smearing the coppery taste over his tongue, and grabs his phone. His heart picks up its pace when he sees Noctis’s name as the caller ID.

He answers as quickly as he can. “Hey, Noct! What’s up?”

_“Why don’t you tell me? You’re the one who called.”_

Is that a hint of annoyance in Noct’s tone? Prompto can’t be sure. “Oh, that was, um...”

_“Prom? You good?”_

Prompto hesitates. “‘Course I am. Look, it was nothing. Sorry for bothering you.”

_“Okay then. See you tomorrow?”_

Right. They were all going to get together at Noctis's apartment tomorrow after work. He’d completely forgotten. “Hell yeah! See you then.”

He doesn’t wait for Noctis’s reply before hanging up. The plastic bin of spinach, overripe tomato, and half-chopped cucumber seem to mock him from the counter. Prompto sighs, packs it all away, and puts it back in the fridge. He’s too nauseous to eat, anyway.

He ends up watching an old sitcom until the sun finishes setting, then slides into bed, somehow exhausted. The letter is placed secretively in the drawer of his night stand. The sound of cars and club music floats in through his window. Normally Prompto wouldn't be bothered, but tonight he groans and tosses his pillow over his head. This is all so wrong. There are too many thoughts racing through his mind; he can’t sleep.

He’s still staring at the ceiling, trying to empty his head, when his phone buzzes. He grabs it, expecting to see a text from Noctis. Instead, there’s one from an unknown number.

_Good night, son. I hope to speak with you more tomorrow._

Prompto scrambles to add his dad’s number to his contacts. Then he opens the chat up and stares at the message. He’s never gotten a good night text from a parent before. How is he supposed to answer?

His phone buzzes again. _Prompto?_

_night, dad_ is what he ends up sending. The few seconds of nothing while he waits for Verstael to reply are the most stressful in his life.

_Even over text, it makes me immeasurably happy for you to call me that._

_well, you are my dad :p_ Prompto texts frantically.

_True, and yet I was worried you would not accept me as such. You were, after all, adopted as a babe. I hope they have been good parents to you._

The statement feels more like an open-ended question, an invitation for Prompto to keep talking. _they’ve done their best._

_I’m glad to hear it. All I want is for you to be happy and safe._

Prompto doesn’t know how to respond to that. He puts the phone back on his night stand, bundles up under his covers, and tries to sleep.

\---

The next morning, he wakes up late, having slept through his alarm. His boss yells at him for the third time that week, and he makes do at lunch with just the apple he'd had time to pack that morning. He gets a text from his mom on his way home to change out of his work uniform; his parents are taking a detour to Duscae for a while, so they won’t be home anytime in the next two months. She ends the text with a kissy face emoji. Prompto doesn’t bother responding; he won’t get anything back.

As he rummages through his clothes, trying to find something clean enough to wear, he comes across a few black t-shirts Noctis had given him ages ago. Technically, his weekend Crownsguard training makes him affiliated with the royal house, making him eligible to wear royal black. He's had these shirts since high school, though. Noctis had insisted he could wear them—it’s his right as the prince’s best friend, apparently.

Prompto gulps down the uncomfortable lump in his throat and glances over at the night stand, where the letter reading _First Magitek Production Facility, Niflheim_ sits. Then he looks at his phone, remembers the conversation he had with a murderer, where he at no point tried to defend the country he grew up in.

He chooses a red shirt and gets dressed.

Twenty minutes later, he’s buzzed into Noctis’s apartment by a Crownsguard who recognizes his face. He shows his ID to a woman in the lobby, and he must not have been placed on any watchlists because of his elusive 'ambassadorial privileges' because he’s swiped through. Noctis’s apartment building always makes him feel mildly uncomfortable; it’s fancy beyond belief, all glossy wood and a complete lack of dirt or mess.

Noctis’s apartment is clean today, which means Ignis showed up at least three hours early. As always, Prompto notices how Gladio and Ignis don’t talk to him nearly as much as they talk to Noctis and each other. He does what he usually does, sticking close to Noctis and keeping to the easy topics, like video games and TV shows.

He’d once overheard Noctis calling him _shy_ to Ignis. He’s not shy, exactly; he just doesn’t want to bring their attention to all the ways he doesn’t fit in by bringing up work or family.

Although, maybe the act of trying _not_ to bring their attention to it is _actually_ bringing their attention to it. He just doesn’t know.

They spend the few hours they have before they get tired and check in for the night eating and gaming. Prompto keeps reaching into his pocket to check his phone, anxious that his dad might text him while he's with his friends. He has to tell them at least some of it—he can't just disappear for weeks on end without warning—but he still hasn't figured out what to say, or when.

Ignis snaps him out of his internal debate by politely asking when his parents will be back.

Prompto rubs the back of his neck as he figures out how to answer. "Not for a while, I guess."

"Their business trip got extended again?" Noctis asks.

So it _was_ a business trip this time. "Seems like it."

"Well, if you would like a home cooked meal every now and then, or you find yourself in need of emergency funds, you know where to find them," Ignis says. He sits on Noctis's other side on the couch. With the three of them half distracted by the video game on screen—Noctis and Gladio are racing as competitively as they can in Moogle Kart—their attention is split. He feels almost comfortable enough to do this.

"Thanks," he says. “You know, something really wild happened yesterday.”

Noctis doesn't glance away from the screen. "Oh? What?"

"I got this letter from my biological dad. He wants to meet me."

Prompto jumps when Noctis drops his controller on the couch and yells _"what?"_

Ignis and Gladio follow suit, giving Prompto their undivided attention. The race on the screen slows to a halt as the CPUs speed past Noctis and Gladio's characters.

Prompto smiles shakily under the inexplicable attention. "It's not really that big a deal—"

"Prom, this is a huge deal! I mean, it's your _dad!"_

"Noct's right," Gladio says. "What's his name? Where's he live?"

Prompto smiles, overwhelmed.

"Noct, Gladio, if you'd both give Prompto some space, please," Ignis says, bless him. Noctis and Gladio back off enough for Prompto to breathe.

"Well? Who is he?" Gladio asks.

Prompto's starting to regret saying anything. "Well—he lives in Lestallum," he says, hoping his face isn't flushing as he tells the lie. "He says he was, um, forced to give me up for adoption. He didn't actually want to get rid of me."

Noctis looks at him oddly. "That's it? You're sure?"

Prompto grins. "Yeah! Why wouldn't I be sure?"

"...okay," Noctis says, and retreats a little, leaning back into the couch. Prompto feels like he's made a misstep somewhere. He glances between his three closest friends, taking in the tight worry on their faces.

"So," he says, trying not to squirm, "I think I'm going to take him up on his offer. Head out to meet him and all that."

"That is your choice to make," Ignis says.

"I might be gone for a few weeks."

"Prompto," Gladio asks, "are you looking for a reason not to go?"

"I…" He probably is. Sure, he's imagined this very scenario so many times—his _real_ dad, or his _real_ mom comes by to pick him up, and they go on an adventure around the world and Prompto doesn't have to worry about not having friends anymore because he has someone who will love him no matter what. It’s an old thought. He has friends now, and it's not like a nineteen year old _needs_ a dad in the way a kid does, but that doesn't stop him from wanting one. His dad’s a murderer, though. Or he’s just a guy doing what he can for his government. It’s still fuzzy in Prompto’s mind. "I want to go, I'm just… not sure. There's some, uh. Some other stuff."

"Stuff like him being Niflheimr?" Noctis asks.

The atmosphere turns positively icy. Prompto freezes with the chill; it's as if the cold, dry air of Niflheim is wafting through the open balcony door. Prompto can vaguely hear Ignis quietly chiding Noctis, and Gladio trying to talk to him, but it's all fading under the slow crescendo of _it's too late, he knows, he knows he knows he knows._

Prompto stands up abruptly. "I'm going to go home," he says.

Noctis is on him in a minute. "Woah, don't leave, Prom. Look, I'm sorry, I just got frustrated. My bad."

"Don't worry about it," Prompto says, grabbing his bag. It's the same one he used in high school. There's a little charm on it, one of a set. He'd given the other one to Noctis. He doesn't know if he still has it. "It's cool."

"No, listen, I just—damnit Prom, stop it!" He snacks Prompto's bag out of his hands. Prompto lets it fall. "Can't we just talk for a sec?"

“Noct, you’re making it worse,” Gladio says gruffly.

Noctis scoffs. “I am not. I’m just trying to—Prompto, _wait!”_

Waiting is the last thing Prompto wants to do. He picks his bag back up and heads for the foyer, where his shoes are. He’d brought a jacket over in case it got cold, but he has no idea where he is and he isn’t going to stop and look. What tipped them off? Was it his distinctly not-Lucian blonde hair? His awkward manner? Or some other thing—maybe he _is_ registered with the Lucian government, and it’s his dad’s fault that Noctis found out. Or maybe they’ve just known since forever. His adoption certificate clearly states he was born in Niflheim; no matter how many official papers have _nationality: Lucian_ written on them, one look at that document and anyone could know the truth. Since he was in the adoption system, the government probably still has a copy. Maybe Noctis has known since the day they met.

Maybe he’s only been okay with it up until now because Prompto showed no interest in Niflheim; now, with him openly considering traveling there to see his father, that thin thread of trust has been snapped.

Ignis catches up with him at the door as he’s sliding into his shoes. He can faintly hear Gladio and Noctis yelling at each other in the living room, the slow churn of coffee dripping into the pot, and the happy music of Moogle Kart playing on the TV.

Ignis places a rare hand on his shoulder. “Forgive His Highness, Prompto. He didn’t mean to make you upset.”

“I’m not upset,” Prompto says automatically. “It’s fine.”

“It is not fine. He should not have brought up your nationality so callously.” Ignis takes his hand back, removing his glasses so he can pinch the bridge of his nose. “We’ve known for some time. The Crownsguard performs a background check on anyone associated with the Prince, please understand.”

So it was his adoption certificate. Prompto nods. “I get it. Don’t worry. It’s my fault for lying.”

“Prompto, you did nothing wrong. You were under no obligation to disclose your origins to us. If anything, we are in the wrong for having known such sensitive information and not informing you of our knowledge. Please come back in and sit. We’ll have a nice chat over coffee and smooth this over.”

Prompto’s confusion manifests as a big fat question mark in his brain. Talk it over? What’s there to talk over? He’s a Nif; they can’t possibly expect him to believe they’ll accept him after this. An unexpected and unfamiliar fury bubbles low in his gut. He’s not some toy they can just throw out when they’re tired of playing friends; he’s not going to sit down and let them _tell_ him he’s not welcome. He already knows he isn’t.

They’ll be better off with a traitor like him gone.

“No thanks,” he says. He’s careful to shut the door quietly as he leaves.

\---

He calls his dad as he walks home. Despite the darkness of the new moon washing over Insomnia, he doesn’t bother taking the late night train. His Crownsguard issue gun is tucked in a holster in his bag, as usual; it’s unloaded and he doesn’t have any bullets, but just the sight of it should be enough to ward off anyone looking for trouble.

His dad answers quickly. _“Prompto? Is something the matter?”_

“I’m gonna take you up on your offer,” he says. His voice sounds hoarse, like he’s been crying, but he knows for a fact his eyes are still dry. “I’ll head out tonight.”

_“Are you certain you’re alright to travel at this hour? There are daemons afoot.”_

“I can take care of myself,” Prompto says, injecting as much confidence into the words as possible.

Verstael chuckles. _“If you insist. I, for one, can hardly wait to meet you, son.”_

“Me too,” Prompto says. He slows to a stop. This part of town is always quiet at night—there’s no one around. Just him and the low, flickering glow of a street light, brightening up the darkness that seems to compromise Prompto’s whole world right now. “I’ll see you soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout out to corvusam for motivating me to write this fic <3


	2. Smoke and Mirrors

Prompto makes it halfway to his house before he's stopped by the sound of footsteps thumping against the sidewalk, followed by Noctis yelling _"wait!"_

He manages to quell his anger enough to stop and turn to face his best friend—assuming they ever _were_ best friends. The sight of Noctis, half frantic and out of breath, knocks him with an unexpected rush of sadness.

He rubs at his eyes, cursing himself for not having a better handle on his emotions. At this point, the constant flipping will kill him.

He lets Noctis speak first. The prince shifts back and forth on his feet while he catches his breath. It takes a few tries for him to be able to speak. “Look, I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why are you sorry? It’s the truth,” Prompto says, his voice wavering. “If you’re here to tell me to get the hell out of your country, don’t worry. I’m already on my way.”

“Prom, no,” Noctis says. “I don’t want you to go!”

“What the hell, Noct?” Prompto snaps. “First you get my hopes up by _lying,_ probably laughing behind my back every day, and now you want to try and stop me from meeting my dad? Who the hell do you think you are, _Highness?”_

Noctis flinches. “That’s not what I meant. And we never laughed at you.”

Prompto slumps over, squatting on the cold concrete. A light rain had rolled in earlier; there are puddles dotting the sidewalk, soaking into his shoes. “Yeah, right.”

“Prom, just listen to me, okay?” Noctis says. “Just let me try to explain.”

Prompto takes in a deep breath. He remembers Lady Lunafreya’s letter, asking him to remain ever at Noctis’s side. It’s that promise he made years ago that keeps him from running again. “Okay. Shoot.”

“I was frustrated because I knew you were lying,” Noctis says, “and I didn’t know why. Prom, we’d never reject you for being born Niflheimr. I don’t _care_ where you came from. All that matters is that you’re here now.”

Prompto laughs hollowly. “Most Insomnians wouldn’t agree with you there.”

“Fuck what _most Insomnians_ say. You belong with us.” Noctis walks over and kneels next to Prompto. The warmth of having him close by raises gooseflesh on Prompto’s bare arms. It’s unfair how cold it is now, when it was so hot earlier, but Prompto guesses Niflheim will be a lot colder. “I’ll support you all the way if you want to meet your dad, but how are you even planning on getting there? Travel to Niflheim is pretty restricted.”

“My dad pulled some strings,” Prompto says. He has no idea why he’s bothering explaining his plans. His head hurts badly; his heart hurts worse. He can’t possibly believe that Noctis is okay with all of this, but he also knows Noctis isn’t a liar.

_Except he did lie, every day, by pretending he didn’t know what you really are._

Prompto lied to him too, though, so maybe that makes them even.

“How?” Noctis asks, turning his nose up. “Who _is_ he?”

He figures there’s no point in keeping secrets anymore. Noctis knows most of it; he might as well know the rest. “He’s a high ranking scientist working for the Niflheimr military.”

“He’s _what?”_ Noctis says. “Prom, you can’t go meet this guy! He could be dangerous.”

“He’s my dad, Noct,” Prompto says. He jumps back up on his feet and starts pacing, his footsteps splashing water over the toes of his shoes. “He’s not going to hurt me.”

“Who says? You’ve never even met him before.” Noctis, precious Noctis with his dad who loves him more than the world and a host of uncles who would give anything for him, looks at Prompto like he’s insane. “What did he even say to you?”

“That I was kidnapped from a Niflheimr base when I was a baby by Lucian soldiers, and that he wants me to come back and meet him,” Prompto snaps. “Don’t you get it, Noct? If it wasn’t for the split second decision of some random soldier nineteen years ago, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. I’m Niflheimr, through and through. I don’t belong here.”

Noctis stands slowly, a look of apprehension on his face. His hands curl tightly into fists. “Prom, Lucian soldiers wouldn’t have kidnapped a baby.”

“Says who?”

“They wouldn’t do it,” Noctis repeats stubbornly. “I doubt Dad would’ve even given them leave to attack a facility with children in it. What proof did this guy give you that he’s your father?”

Prompto half-consciously reaches for his phone, where the texts from his dad sit. He thinks about the letter, still tucked carefully away in his night stand. The feelings he’s having, the sense of sincerity he gets from Verstael, the affection—isn’t that proof enough?

His lack of words makes Noctis unfold one fist and reach out for him. “Come on, lets go back to my place. In the morning we can head for the Citadel and pull up your adoption record. Then we can sort this out.”

“What’s there to sort out?” Prompto says, tensing up.

“I’m just saying, a lot of people in Niflheim want to get close to the Crown. This guy could be manipulating you—”

“Oh, fuck you!” Prompto yells. Noctis steps back in shock. “Seriously, you have no idea what it’s like, do you? You don’t know what it feels like to have _no one_ who wants you, to live every day knowing if you just dropped dead no one would care. You have no idea how lucky you are!”

“Prom -”

“I’m going to go see my dad,” Prompto says shakily, “because I know he wouldn’t lie to me. He won’t kick me out because I was raised in Lucis, either. He actually cares about me! He’s not self-centered enough to pretend every single thing in my life revolves around him, unlike _someone._ ”

Noctis looks like he might be about to cry, which is uncharacteristic enough that it almost has Prompto apologizing. Almost. “Prompto, wait—”

“No. I’m done. See you around, Noct.” And Prompto _runs._ He knows he’s got the advantage on Noctis; he’s been running for years and years, and Noctis’s bad knee is probably already acting up from the cold and the damp. It’s unfair of him to take advantage of that, but right now Prompto doesn’t care. He has to get gone, and quickly, before he changes his mind again. He’s still unsure about everything, but the one thing he knows is that no matter what, he has to meet his dad. He has to go to Niflheim, to find out where he really belongs; here, in the city he grew up in, where everyone would reject him if they knew the truth, or there, where he was born, where his real dad is waiting with open arms.

Hopefully, it won’t take him too long to figure it out. He’s never been able to hold his anxieties at bay for too long. He’ll decide for himself, and then either stay in Niflheim or return to Insomnia.

“Prom!” Noctis calls out from behind him. “Wait, _please!”_

 _Remain ever at his side,_ Lunafreya says.

 _He deserves better than me,_ Prompto thinks, and keeps running.

\---

It doesn’t take long for him to get going. He drops by his house, packs some clothes and the letter, and heads for the Wall. He considers bringing his gun, but figures it’ll just cause trouble if he tries to sneak a weapon through international borders. Prompto doesn’t have a car, but there’s one waiting for him at the city gates; the driver has pale blonde hair and a rough accent, and opens the door for Prompto like there’s nothing else he’d rather do. The interior is sleek black leather that smells pleasantly new, and there’s even a small fridge with water and snacks inside. Prompto nibbles on mini sandwiches as they’re waved through the Wall checkpoint with nary a glance. He offers some of the food to the driver; the man declines, and they continue on.

He gets the courage about thirty minutes in to text his adoptive parents, and just as quickly loses it. He probably won’t be gone for more than a few weeks. Two getting there, one or two at his dad’s place, and then another two back. Hell, even if he’s gone when his adoptive parents get back, they probably won’t even notice.

The car is comfortable enough that he sleeps through most of the drive, intermittently waking up in a panic, thinking about how much of a mistake he’s made. At those intervals, he texts his dad, who reassures him over and over that he’s doing the right thing. The man shows the kind of patience only a father could have.

They stop first in Galdin Quay, and Prompto stretches his legs after the unusually long car ride. Verstael has rented him one of the nicest rooms in the resort, and Prompto marvels at everything; the bar stocked to the brink with every alcoholic beverage imaginable, the endless room service, the feather-soft bed. His driver departs back to wherever he came from, and Prompto spends two days at the resort alone, relaxing.

Noctis tries texting and calling him dozens of times, and Ignis and Gladio send their own share of messages. Prompto ignores all of them. He can’t bring himself to block their numbers, though, so mostly he just sunbathes, swims, and looks wistfully at the unanswered messages on his phone.

He only ever listens to one voicemail—it’s from Noctis. He’s clearly been crying, his voice wet and scratchy. Prompto only listens for a second before throwing his phone across the room. He can’t bear to hear his best friend plead like that. If he does, he knows he’d be hitchhiking back to Insomnia the first chance he got.

As beautiful as Gladin Quay is (and now he’s _really_ missing that he hadn’t been able to go on that trip with the guys), he can’t stay forever. Once he’s recharged and ready to go, his dad informs him of a yacht coming in. A _private_ yacht. It’ll take him through Altissia and on to Tenebrae, with full amenities the whole trip. The staff on board are friendlier than the driver, and the captain has even met his dad. _Chief Besithia,_ he calls him.

"He's a little odd," the captain says over dinner one night. It's Niflheimr food, albeit without most of the heavy spices and uncomfortable meat products (apparently, they eat animals' guts and hearts and even genitals—nothing is to be wasted in the tundra). His dad says he wants to acclimate Prompto to Niflheimr food slowly, so he feels more at home when he gets there. "But I get the feeling all scientists are like that, you know? He's very much in love with his work. He's a real reasonable guy, though. Values loyalty strongly. And he's easier to talk to than most of the big wigs in the empire."

"Huh," Prompto says, pushing his food around the plate. "I've never been all that good with science. I'm more of an artist."

"Oh? What kind?"

"Photography," Prompto says, his eyes cast to the side. "Do you think he'll mind if I'm, uh, not like him?"

"I never got the impression from him that he hates art. He's got a ton of it in his manor—paintings, tapestries, sculptures, the like. I think he's got some framed photographs, too. Besides, you ain't that different. You're the spitting image of him."

"Oh." A warm feeling blossoms in his chest. "That's nice to hear. Really, really nice."

The rest of the way to Tenebrae is much the same; luxury food, a room much nicer than his room at home, and the open sea. They pass straight through Accordo, sailing through the canals of Altissia. Prompto takes photo after photo of the pristine white buildings, the glittering waves, and the rainbows created by the waterfalls. He considers taking a few selfies and sending them to his dad, but he thinks the first time they see each other should be in person. It will be more meaningful and all that.

By the time they finally get to Tenebrae, about a week and a half have passed since he left Insomnia. The texts from Noctis and the guys have trickled out into almost nothing, but Prompto gets a new one just as he disembarks with his bag and starts to head for the station, where a private train car is apparently waiting for him.

_prom, i understand if you hate me, but please just tell me youre ok._

Prompto cringes as he reads it. After a few minutes of back and forth, he decides to reply as he settles down onto a bench to wait. _i don’t hate you_

Noctis’s response is near instantaneous; when Prompto does the time zone calculations in his head, he realizes Noctis _should_ be in Council right now. Either he’s skipping, or texting under the table. _prom!! are you okay?_

_i’m fine. just got to tenebrae, on my way to niflheim right now_

_where are you going? lots of places in niflheim arent safe_

Prompto huffs. His dad has taken every measure to ensure his comfort and safety on this trip so far; visiting his home country isn’t going to be _dangerous_ for him. Noctis’s question does, however, make him realize that he didn’t actually ask his dad where exactly he lives. He switches to his chat with his dad and shoots off a quick text: _btw, where in niflheim are we meeting up?_

 _A scientific research base just outside of Gralea. The mountains surrounding us are beautiful,_ Verstael replies. _And I would appreciate it if you used your full words, Prompto._

 _will do, old man :)_ Prompto texts back, then returns to his conversation with Noctis.

 _he lives near gralea,_ he types. The station attendants announce that the train is ready for boarding. Before Prompto can pick up his bag, a valet comes out and grabs it for him, calling him _Master Argentum_ as he goes. Prompto follows him into the car, marvelling at how nice it is compared to the sweaty, cramped public transport of Insomnia.

Noctis sends him several texts at a rapid-fire pace. _please come back to insomnia dude, gralea isnt safe. i asked dad and he said its the most dangerous place in the empire right now. theres politics and shit, lots of assassination plots, daemons everywhere. please please please come back, im so sorry_

 _noct, i’ll be fine. my dad is gonna protect me._ Honestly, from Noctis’s description, Gralea doesn’t sound much more dangerous than just about anywhere in Lucis. Noctis has had countless attempts on his life before, and Gladio and Ignis have had a few as well. A guy even drew a gun on Prompto once to try and get information about the royal family (Prompto had disarmed him. He’d gotten a pat on the back for it from Cor the Immortal, and consequentially died and went to heaven). There are daemons everywhere in Lucis, too. Besides that, his dad already warned him about all those things—he assured Prompto he’d be safe as the son of Niflheim’s most esteemed researcher, and that daemons in Niflheim tended to avoid human-populated areas for fear of the MTs. He thinks it’s nice that those metal husks are protecting the civilians. At least it means his dad’s inventions are doing some good in the world.

_prom you gotta rethink this. youve never met the guy before_

_he’s my dad, i trust him_

_why!! why do you trust him!! youve never fucking met him!_

Prompto can feel himself getting angry again, but this time he takes a few slow, deep breaths, and looks out the window as the train starts pulling out of the station. Tenebrae is covered in pretty purple and blue flowers, with floating rocks comprising most of the landscape. It’s calming to look at. When he turns back to his phone, he takes his time typing out a message. _if you’d been adopted as a baby, and you never met his majesty, knew nothing about who your real family is and had to make do with one that’s never around, and one day his majesty wrote to you, wouldn’t you want to go meet him? wouldn’t you want to know if you had a parent who actually cared about you?_

It takes what feels like hours for Noctis to respond. _shit, prom, i didnt realize it was that bad_

_that’s okay. our lives are different. i’m sorry for yelling at you_

_nah, you were right to, i was being an ass. im still not happy about you doing this, though. im worried_

_well, stop worrying. dad already told me i’ve got a ticket back to lucis whenever i like. i’m thinking i spend a week or so in niflheim, then head back and think over my options._ He hesitates for a moment, then keeps typing. _you can’t get rid of me that easily_

_i dont want to get rid of you at all. youre my best friend_

Prompto desperately tries to remind himself that Noctis isn’t a liar. He still can’t help but doubt. _good, cause you’re stuck with me_

He sets his phone face down and spends the rest of the train ride alternatively looking out at the scenery and accepting various food and drinks brought his way. His dad texts him intermittently, asking after his comfort and well-being. No matter how many times it happens, Prompto can’t get used to it. He’s startled by every text, and smiles at every _Are you still doing well? Let me know if you need anything._

Noctis just doesn’t get it. There’s nothing to worry about at all. Prompto’s starting to feel better about this decision already.

He curls up on the seat and does the only thing there is left to do: wait.

\---

To say Gralea is a massive city is an understatement. It looks like a spider, mechanical buildings covered in scaffolding stretching far out into the tundra, everything gleaming in the light of the sun. It’s surprisingly sunny, despite the weather app telling Prompto it’s sub-zero temperatures outside. The snow itself is almost blinding to look at. Prompto is handed a pair of yellow reflective goggles by one of the train staff, to wear once he gets out. If he neglects to put them on, he could actually damage his eyesight.

They pass Gralea by going around the city instead of through it. As they get closer to the edge, Prompto sees MTs standing guard in the snow beyond the furthest buildings. Their weapons and armor appear to sweat, covered in water. He texts his dad and asks what, exactly, they’re doing.

 _The sentinels produce a constant heat from their bodies to melt snow and ice,_ Verstael explains. Prompto thinks he can hear the pride in his voice even over text. _Another ingenious invention of mine. It uses minimal energy and keeps them limber and ready for battle._

 _are they the mts that protect people from daemons?_ Prompto asks.

_In part. Their other duties include defending the city from a possible invasion._

The reminder of the war makes Prompto’s gut twist. He doesn’t push the conversation.

He disembarks from the train at its final stop, just past the city limits. As he takes his bag from the porter, he realizes he doesn’t have any money to tip the guy, or any of the staff who brought him food. He texts his dad frantically, asking if he can help. Verstael agrees, and wires all the staff generous tips.

Prompto is led to an on site warehouse, where he’s introduced to the most beautiful vehicle he’s ever seen—a state-of-the-art snowmobile with space for luggage, yet again courtesy of his dad. Prompto gleefully pulls on the winter coat he’d been given along with the goggles and jumps on. He’s always wanted to drive one of these.

He practically tears through the surrounding wilderness to get to the base. Verstael was right, the mountains _are_ beautiful. They look almost purple against the cloudless blue sky, stretching far higher than any of the mountains visible from Insomnia. There are lots of pine trees, too, scattered around in clumps of forest surrounding the well-traveled path from the train station to the base. Occasionally he spots wood cabins scattered about in the snow drifts. He pulls to a stop at the side of the road and walks up to one of them, curious.

The wood structure is less of a cabin and more of a three-sided hut. There are stacks of boxes inside, all with weapons propped up nearby. Prompto blanches at the sight of them, black and threatening among the pristine white snow of the valley.

He guesses it makes sense, given that his dad works at a Magitek facility, but it’s eerie to find weapons stored out in the open, where anyone can come by and take them. He reaches for one of them—a rifle, long and sleekly designed—before snatching his hand back, ashamed. He’s not going to steal, and he’s definitely not going to steal a _weapon._ Why the hell would he even need one?

As he heads back to his snowmobile, the hair on the back of his neck stands up. His skin tingles with the uncomfortable sense that someone is watching him. When he looks around, he can’t see anyone. There must be guards up in the mountains, hidden from sight. He wonders if they’re MTs or human. Wonders if they’d have shot him if he had touched the rifle.

He shivers as he sinks back on the snowmobile and fires up the engine. Maybe he should have been more cautious about all this; Niflheim isn’t shy about how much they love their military bases. They’ve built them all over Lucis, and according to the news they’re not keen on anyone snooping around them. There’s been lots of stories of people going missing after they get too near the bases—and now Prompto is willingly heading right into one.

 _It’s okay,_ Prompto thinks as he races off towards the First Magitek Production Facility. _Your dad’s the chief of this base. You’re a guest. It’ll be fine._

He does ask himself, though, why his dad didn’t offer to meet him at his manor.

\---

His dad’s research lab is huge. There’s a massive gate leading into it, staffed by MTs and foot soldiers. The woman running the reception desk, which is located in a small building stuffed with file cabinets and computers, excitedly greets him. Prompto shies away from the attention, already jittery at the knowledge that he’ll be meeting his dad soon. He’s quickly ushered into the main facility, where his jacket and bag are taken and he’s told to sit and wait for his dad in what looks like a break room, complete with engineering magazines and ebony vending machines.

He tries to fix his windswept hair in the glass reflection of one of the vending machines. He hopes Verstael won’t be disappointed in what he sees. He doesn’t think he could handle it if his dad took one look at him and decided he wasn’t worth his time.

The sound of a heavy door opening startles him. Voices float in, bouncing off of the metal walls. Prompto turns around to find himself face to face with a mirror.

Or, not a mirror, but maybe if would be if he had paler skin, bleached his hair even blonder, and aged twenty or so years. His dad is Prompto’s spitting image. Or Prompto is his spitting image. The point is, he bears a remarkable resemblance to his dad. It’s all the same—eyes, chin, nose—except for the fact that Verstael is bulkier. Or maybe that’s just his ornate red and black armor.

Prompto has no idea what to say, how to even react. He stares for a few minutes, open-mouthed. He thinks he feels his eyes misting over.

Luckily, his dad is thinking for both of them. He grabs Prompto by the shoulders and says “son, I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Can I hug you?” Prompto blurts out.

Verstael chuckles. “Of course, Prompto.”

He practically barrels into his dad. The sharp edges of his armor hurt a little, but Prompto doesn’t mind. Verstael’s arms come up around him, and Prompto basically collapses into him. _This_ is what Noctis feels like when His Majesty hugs him. This is what he’s been missing all these years.

“Alright, that’s enough now. I have a strict no tears policy in the lab,” Verstael says, pushing him away. Prompto laughs. His dad makes _jokes._ They _have_ to be related.

“And he’s quite right for it,” and unfamiliar voice says, making Prompto jolt. He’d been so distracted by seeing his dad, he hadn’t even noticed anyone else in the room. He looks up to see a man so much taller than either him or his dad—another thing he got from him, the unspectacular height that has made him the butt of so many of Gladio’s jokes—dressed in the most ridiculous outfit he’s ever seen. The guy even has a weird fake wing lining his left arm. It looks funny as hell, but his narrow yellow eyes and smarmy grin keep Prompto from saying anything out of some repressed self-preservation instinct.

“Ah. This is Ardyn,” his dad says, undisturbed by the guy’s towering posture and leer. “He’s one of my closest colleagues.”

“ _Pleased_ to make your acquaintance, dear Prompto,” Ardyn says, swooping into a bow, and wow, that is weird. Does Noctis always feel this weird when people bow to him? “My, my! You truly are Verstael’s son! You two could be twins, I say. Or perhaps clones?”

Verstael sighs in obvious annoyance. “Ardyn.”

“Ah, forgive me. I forgot you told me to ‘tone it down.’” Ardyn winks secretively at Prompto. He smiles back as genuinely as he can manage—Ardyn’s seriously unnerving him. There’s just something about his manner that seems slightly off, slightly _wrong._

“It’s nice to meet you?” he manages.

Ardyn bows again. It’s no less awkward than the first time.

His dad rolls his eyes. “If you’re quite done,” he hisses at Ardyn, then turns to Prompto with a soft smile, “I’d like to show you to your room, Prompto. It’s likely not to the level of comfort you’re used to, having grown up in Insomnia, but it’s close to my own quarters as well as the facility’s central heating unit, so it should be warm enough for you to sleep in.”

“Thank you,” Prompto says.

Verstael takes his arm and leads him away from the break room. They pass no more MTs or armed guards, only scientists and lab techs in long white coats, who all greet both his dad and Ardyn with enthusiasm. Every once in a while, one of them stops his dad and asks for advice on this or that, resulting in several minute long conversations which Prompto doesn’t dare try and contribute to.

Prompto’s eyes wander around the facility, taking it all in; the white walls and floors, the sleek lighting designed so it doesn’t reflect too harshly off all the metal. Most of the doors are on motion sensors, sliding open and shut when they walk past. Inside are offices, labs, storage rooms filled with racks of bottled substances, elemental ores, medical supplies. They pass a cafeteria, filled with posh looking tables and a serve-yourself salad bar, another break room with televisions and gaming systems set up, a billiards setup, and a table clearly meant for playing poker. Mostly, they pass lab after lab, all of them buzzing with scientists working like drones, mixing chemicals and taking notes. A few even have live animals inside, which are subjected to syringes and creams. Some of them are dead, being dissected with clinical indifference. Prompto looks away from those.

They pass one lab that’s visible from the hallway through glass windows; the scientists inside are wearing full hazmat suits and working at microscopes. “They’re studying a rather dangerous form of disease causing plasmodium in there, trying to find a cure,” his dad says. “This facility isn’t just for militarial use, you see.”

He sounds so _proud_ of his work. Prompto can see why. The entire facility is more than impressive; it’s unbelievable, and all the employees seem so fond of his dad. With all these honors, Prompto worries he might not even need a son.

He feels dizzy all of a sudden; he’d been so worried about his dad working with the Niflheimr army, then worried over whether he made a mistake, _then_ nervous about all the weapons outside, and now that he’s finally in and all _those_ worries have been made obsolete by the fantastic event of _meeting his dad_ , he’s worrying about something else.

He lets his dad ramble on about something or other for a while longer before clearing his throat. “Hey, dad?”

“Yes?”

“Are you happy to see me?”

Verstael stops walking. He lays his hands on Prompto’s shoulders again and squeezes. “Prompto. I am _overjoyed_ to see you.”

“Oh,” Prompto says. “Okay.”

“I thought I’d lost you that day,” his dad continues. Ardyn shuffles over to stand next to him. The way he looks down at his dad, with a slight smile on his face, unexpectedly catches Prompto’s attention. His dad keeps talking, undisturbed. “Truly, you have no idea how momentous this day is for me.”

The tears are back. Prompto firmly blinks them away. “Right.”

Verstael lets go of his shoulders and prompts him to keep walking. His fast pace causes him to get a few steps ahead, while Prompto stays behind, trying to dry his eyes. A tap on his shoulder has him looking back to Ardyn.

“A word of advice,” Ardyn says, the words hanging in the air like a question. Prompto nods warily. “Our dear Chief Besithia is a man with many faces. Take care not to be taken in by any of them.”

Something about the way he says it, the genuine quality of his tone, has Prompto listening carefully. He doesn’t respond, turning the words over in his head. Ardyn grins.

Then his dad calls back to them to _“hurry up,”_ and the moment is gone.

They continue through the facility, down a path of perpendicular and parallel hallways that have Prompto’s head spinning, and finally reach a door marked _Residential Section._ From there it’s only a few more turns before they arrive at room 357. Verstael taps a card to the door, and it slides open seamlessly.

The room is slightly bigger than Prompto’s bedroom in his adoptive parents’ house. It’s dorm-style, with only a bed, dresser, desk, and closet space. His bag is on the floor. Verstael hands him the key. “There is a shared bathroom down the hall. If you would like to use my private bathroom instead, don’t be shy to ask.”

“I won’t,” Prompto says. He notices that Ardyn isn’t around anymore. He must have slipped away while they were walking. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” his dad says.

“Ardyn said something… weird, just now.” Prompto rubs at his wristband. Verstael’s eyes flick down to it, then back up. “It was about you.”

Verstael huffs. “Ardyn is well known as a compulsive liar. You’d do good to ignore anything he says.”

“I’ll put it out of my mind, then,” Prompto says.

His dad pats him on the shoulder again. “As you should. I have some matters to attend to, and I’m sure you’d like to rest a while. I’ll be back in two hours to collect you for dinner.”

“Sounds great!” Prompto chirps. “See you then, dad.”

There’s a quick hug, and then Verstael is gone.

Prompto shuts the door and sits on the bed. It’s comfortable, clearly some sort of foam meant to contour to a body’s shape. There’s a weighted blanket in the closet. It’s all very nice, if a bit sterile. Prompto hums to himself and twists his wristband, thinking about the letter tucked away in his bag, his stupid fight with Noctis. The war. The weapons he’d seen, and his subconscious urge to grab them. He thinks about how he’s weeks away from anything familiar.

He puts his head in his hands, feels like his body is sinking into the floor. Like his brain is turning to mush. _Chief Besithia is a man with many faces. You’d do good to ignore anything he says._

 _You don’t_ belong.

His heart is back to feeling just as hollow as before. He sits, doing nothing, until his dad comes to fetch him for dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> immediately after posting this i realized i forgot to reply to the comments on the first chapter _(:3」∠)_ whoops?  
> anyway.... the plot thickens


	3. Extended Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey. you know how i said in the first chapter notes that the tags would be updated with new chapters? yeah, that's a thing now.

Over next morning’s breakfast, Prompto broaches the question he’s been thinking about since last night. Ardyn had joined him and his dad for dinner, and the two of them had spent the majority of the meal passing thinly veiled slights at each other, having arguments for the sake of arguments, and aggressively trying to get Prompto to pick a side in all of it. Ardyn had sent Prompto secretive winks every time he managed to piss Verstael off enough that he lost his composure. It’s not a family dynamic Prompto has seen before, but he knows not every couple is like his adoptive parents, who are more lovey-dovey honeymoon phase all the time.

As his dad takes a sip of coffee, Prompto looks at the ground and asks, “so, is Ardyn my stepdad?”

Verstael chokes on his drink. Prompto passes him a napkin hurriedly, saying “I’m sorry! Are you okay?”

His dad waves him away. “What gave you that impression?” he asks, his voice scratchy. “Tell me, so I can banish the behavior from my personality immediately.”

“I mean, you two fight a lot? Some people flirt like that, don’t they?” Prompto says, his hands still hovering.

“I’m afraid it would be impossible for me _not_ to fight with that man,” his dad grumbles. “But to answer your question, no. We are not, and never will be, involved. I would never lower myself to his level.”

Prompto nods slowly. “That’s fair. No offense, since he’s your friend and all, but he seems kind of weird.”

“‘Kind of weird’ doesn’t describe half of it,” Verstael mutters.

Prompto waits a few minutes (and makes sure his dad isn’t eating or drinking anything) before putting forth his next question. “So, if you’re cool with talking about it, what happened to my mom?”

His dad looks at him blankly. “Your mother?”

“Yeah. Just, you haven’t mentioned her, so I was curious. Like I said, no pressure if it’s a sore subject. I don’t really need to know.” But he would like to. Gods, would he like to.

Verstael snorts, and the dismissive sound has Prompto’s heart sinking just a bit. “The subject is hardly _sore._ Your mother and I were scarcely together. After you were born, she decided motherhood was not for her, dropped you at my doorstep, then fled, never to be seen again. Trust me, it wasn’t a great loss.” He sips at his coffee again. “Though I suppose, with things turning out the way they did, you ended up with a mother anyway. A different father, as well.”

“...not really,” Prompto mutters. Maybe it was too much for him to wish for a father _and_ a mother. Hasn’t he been granted enough already? “They took care of me, but they weren’t… really parents.”

“They neglected you?” Verstael asks carefully.

It’s not an word Prompto has ever let himself think about for long, but… “I guess.”

There’s a brief moment of silence. It weighs down on the room, communicating nineteen years worth of regrets and loneliness from either side. Verstael breaks it. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to protect you.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Prompto says.

“It’s always the parent’s fault.” Verstael grins. Maybe the expression out of place for the current conversation, but Prompto is grateful for the opportunity to switch to a less emotionally draining topic. “Now, how about a tour of my lab?”

Verstael stands, grabbing a white lab coat from the back of his chair, and Prompto jumps to follow him. Despite the rough start to the day, he’s eager to look around. He hadn’t slept well last night, having been plagued by a myriad of nightmares, but once the superimposed images of bubbly green liquid and glass, black bars and the faint stench of formaldehyde had faded, he felt a little more ready to take on the day. He’s safe in his current situation. No matter what happens during the war or how many weapons there are stashed nearby, his dad will protect him. He’s got nothing to feel anxious about. Everything will be fine; he’ll stick around for maybe a week, then go back to Insomnia and apologize to Noctis for yelling. Maybe he’ll come back to Niflheim for holidays.

Through all of his plans for the future, he tries to ignore Ardyn’s foreboding words. His dad had said the guy was a compulsive liar, and Prompto has seen evidence to support that. He’s sure Ardyn absolutely intended for him to think he and Verstael were together, even though they aren’t. That’s proof enough that he’s untrustworthy, right? But then, does playing a harmless prank on his friend’s long lost son really make him a liar? That seems like a regular uncle thing to do, if the way Clarus acts towards Noctis is any indication. He’d sounded sincere enough, although compulsive liars are supposed to be good at sounding genuine…

It’s all a huge mess. Prompto calms himself by reiterating, firmly, that he doesn’t have to figure out everything at once while he’s here. They’ve got time. First, he’ll take a tour around the lab with his dad. Then he’ll worry about Ardyn. There’s no point in stressing himself out over something that might turn out to be nothing.

The labs are just as impressive as Prompto remembered it from the previous day. They can’t go into a lot of the working labs without full protective equipment—it’s too dangerous, fumes and whatnot, Verstael says—so instead they poke their heads into the research offices. Men and women in formal lab coats look up and greet them everywhere they go. Prompto is awed by the amount of respect his dad commands. Every person who speaks to them is all “Chief Besithia” this and “sir” that. It makes Prompto feel an odd sort of pride, to see his dad so well respected.

Soon after, he gets to see his dad in action for the first time; one of the assistants needs help discerning whether the information she’s found in a database is reliable or not. His dad leans over her desk, pursing his lips as he looks over the paper. Then he commends her for a job well done and tells her to send the article straight to him for incorporation into their latest project.

Prompto has no idea what their latest project is. When he asks, his dad merely smirks and says: “divinity.”

It's one of the weirdest things he’s ever heard, but hey. Scientists. They’re weird people.

After that, they pass a wide room fitted out with nothing but massive lights hanging from the ceiling. Before Prompto can ask what they’re for, his dad chuckles. “Those are for training daemons we’ve captured from the wild.”

“Wait, seriously?” Prompto says, gawking at the still empty room. “Why would you even want to tame daemons?”

“Many reasons. Chiefly, it will be easier for us to handle the swarms if we are able to control them. We won’t waste as many foot soldiers, and it will make our citizens feel more secure.”

“Wow,” Prompto says. “How are you doing it?”

“We aren’t, currently,” Verstael mutters. "They don’t respond well to positive reinforcement, you see. A daemon doesn’t treat a human who feeds them any more kindly than one who torments them. We’ve been attempting to control them through fear and pain by using UV lights, but the results have been inconclusive at best."

Prompto swallows nervously. "Are there daemons in the facility right now?"

His dad pats him on the back gently. "Of course not. That would be _far_ too dangerous. We cull them immediately after the experiments end."

Prompto breathes out in relief. He's never seen a daemon before, but he _has_ seen the scars stretching over Noctis's back, scars which still cause him pain eleven years later. He's not keen on meeting any creatures of the night, either today or ever, especially not when he left his gun at home.

Nearly thirty minutes later, after his dad finishes showing him a small portion of the massive facility, they find Ardyn hanging around one of the offices. He’s wearing an even more horrific outfit than yesterday’s, an orange blouse with white pants and maroon ankle boots. Verstael stops to snap at him for violating facility dress rules. Ardyn replies with an equal parts flirty, equal parts irritating “are you going to make me change?” Prompto averts his eyes, feeling just a little out of place.

One of the lab techs stage-whispers “this could take a while. You’re probably good to look around on your own if you want,” while the others watch the entertainment with barely concealed laughter.

Prompto takes the guy’s words to heart. There are multiple offices and hallways branching off from this one, all of them unexplored. While Ardyn leads his dad into an even more ludicrous argument about the appropriateness of using different colored paper for their reports (“I think the Emperor might appreciate a memo in pastel blue, don’t you think? It would be easier on his eyes.” “It would be easier on _my_ eyes if you didn’t dress like a neon sign factory threw up on you.”), Prompto steps into a side hallway and follows the sharp right angles of the halls. They’re all white and black, with a few bookshelves scattered throughout. He passes a closet with a heavy lock on it and a huge array of machine guns inside, and again his hands itch with the urge to reach out and grab one. He shoves it down.

The room he ends up in is darkened. There are what looks like large lights fixed on the far wall, casting a pale green glow on the floor. The air is perhaps a degree or two colder than the rest of the facility. Prompto inches forward, peering at the lights. As he gets closer, he sees they’re not lights at all, but containers filled with a type of glowing liquid. Then something moves in one of them, and—

It’s a _baby._ Tiny and pale, with its little fists clenched tight. Its mouth opens in a silent cry.

Prompto gasps, stumbles back. Falls against something firm. His dad sighs in exasperation. "I was hoping you wouldn't see this so soon."

"Dad," Prompto says, still staring at the baby floating innocently only a few feet away. Another child bumps into the glass of the adjacent tank. It wiggles around, making little bubbles as it kicks. When it floats around to face them, Prompto catches sight of a black mark on its wrist. "What are they? Why are they in here?"

"'They' are not human, son. Come, let's leave this place. I know it's upsetting you." He puts his hands on Prompto's arms, tries to turn him around.

"We're not leaving until you tell me what those are," Prompto says shakily, "because they look pretty human to me."

"They are experimental subjects. They'll be kept in the tubes for about a year or so while their bodies rapidly mature into adulthood."

"And then… what?"

"They'll be made into MTs, of course."

Prompto whirls around. His dad is looking at him with a distinctly unimpressed expression. Prompto glances frantically between him and the babies, floating aimlessly in their tanks, eyes still shut.

His mind is racing. He thinks about the MTs standing watch outside Gralea, outside the facility, mindlessly enduring the Glacian’s eternal winter. He thinks about the ones dying in battle, being cut down again and again only to be replaced by another wave mere minutes later.

He'd always thought it was kind of fucked up that Lucis recruited refugees for the Kingsglaive, but at least they don't force grow children for the job.

"This is sick!" he snaps at his dad. "Can't you see how horrible this is?"

"Prompto, listen to me—"

"No, those are _babies!_ We have to get them out of there, c'mon!"

Verstael pulls him back by his arms. Prompto finds himself in his dad's embrace once again, and despite everything it's a struggle to not immediately melt into it. The lack of armor today makes it much more comfortable than it was before; Verstael is so warm, with a steady heartbeat and even breathing. "Son, listen to me."

Prompto bites his lip, and listens.

"Those, as I said, are not human. I know how they look. I'm disturbed by it, too. But they are not _babies._ They have no brain, and therefore no consciousness, no genuine life. Their bodies are produced through an artificial growth process. Even if we did free them, they would die within minutes. Their cells would deteriorate without the solution to stabilize them."

"MTs don't just die randomly," Prompto says.

His dad squeezes him. "No. Their mature bodies are temporarily stabilized for use in combat. After a few years of service, however, they tend to break down."

Prompto looks back at the tanks, with their frothy green liquid and the babies trapped inside. As he looks closer, he notices how they hardly twitch or move. They just float, as if they were inanimate dolls, before suddenly thrashing about at random. The sight reminds him of insects caught in a spider’s web, and he shivers.

"Some babies are naturally born without brains, though," he tries.

Verstael has an answer for that, too. "Those children rarely live beyond infancy, and their humanity is contestable at best. It's a sad business, I know, but there is a war on. We must all do our part, for our country’s sake."

"You can't expect me to be okay with this," Prompto says, his voice cracking. He can't look away.

His dad forces him to. He puts a hand on Prompto's chin and coaxes him back. "I'd hoped you wouldn't see this until a while from now. I hadn't intended to keep it from you, but I thought if you saw the rest of the work my facility does, it would be easier to understand this. Promise me you won't run off on your own again?"

Prompto flushes with shame. This must be what it feels like to be properly chided by a parent; it's awful, in a pit of awful feelings swirling around in his stomach. "I won't."

"Good. Now, let's go have lunch, hmm? Put this little excursion out of your mind."

"I will," he promises. Before they leave the room, Prompto hazards a glance back at the tanks. One of the babies opens its eyes, gazing at him sightlessly.

They're blue.

\---

Hours later they're walking back from lunch. While they duck in and out of various labs, Prompto tugs at his wristband. Beneath it lies the odd tattoo he's had ever since he was a child, the one he's always kept covered. He can't stop thinking about the matching mark on that baby's wrist.

"Hey, Dad?" he says. Verstael turns to face him with a raised eyebrow. He's been annoyed since the incident with the babies, keeping a firm hand on Prompto’s elbow to keep him from wandering off again. The shame washes over him, and he can feel his face burning. "I was wondering, what's this?"

He pushes the wristband up enough that it uncovers the bottom half of the tattoo. His dad makes an intrigued sound.

"That's an identification mark," he says. "All children in military affiliated bases have them. It's meant to immediately identify a child in case they've been separated from their parents."

"Gotcha," Prompto says, unsure. "I've always wondered about it."

"It would normally be removed at age sixteen," Verstael continues. "If you like, I can arrange to have it done while you're here."

Prompto’s mouth drops open. He'd never thought he'd be free of this mark, had never even considered it. "Can I think it over?"

"But of course."

They start walking again. Prompto clears his throat. "Hey, about those babies…"

His dad sighs. "Prompto."

"I know, I know. It's just, they have the same tattoos, right?"

His dad laughs a little at that. "Ah, yes. That. It's a convenient method of identification, so we decided to make it multipurpose. Your mark, when scanned, would only show your name and mine, as well as my current assignment. Theirs would produce a whole host of technical information."

"Is that so?" Prompto asks.

His dad smirks. "You don't trust me?"

"I do," Prompto assures him quickly.

"Good. Now, this lab here…"

They continue with the tour as if nothing happened. Prompto walks along, his wrist itching. They walk down a hallway with floor to ceiling windows on one wall, looking out over a wide room. It’s filled with motionless MTs, all of them standing at attention, perfect little identical soldiers. All flesh bodies stuffed into armor. Prompto thinks he sees one of them look up at him. He hurries to follow his father.

\---

That night, Verstael gives him the most expensive suit Prompto has ever owned. It's black with red pinstripes and lapels, tailored to him perfectly. "I had my tailor make the suit to my teenage measurements," his dad explains. "Seems I made the right choice."

"Thanks," Prompto says, looking himself over in the mirror. His dad hadn't told him about the banquet until around an hour ago, and then apologized, explaining that such events are so normal here, he'd neglected to realize Prompto would need a heads up. Prompto has taken it in what he thinks is as much stride as he can manage, given that he's never been good in formal settings. At least it's just dinner.

He's still jumpy from what happened earlier, still unsure of what, exactly, is happening, but apparently this event is important to his father, so he's not going to mess it up. He has to make up for running off earlier, and yelling at his dad. After all, Verstael had perfectly acceptable explanations for everything. Desperate times, desperate measures, yeah?

(Prompto ignores his uncertainty. He can go back to Insomnia whenever he wants, he reminds himself yet again. He’s not trapped, even if that’s how it feels.)

They leave their rooms and head straight through the lab, towards what Verstael refers to as the 'recreational' section of the facility. There's a group of research assistants hanging out in one of the break rooms they have to pass through on their way down. Prompto nearly trips when he hears one of them say, "I hear the Emperor has already arrived. He's waiting in the banquet hall."

"The Emperor is gonna be there?" he hisses at his dad. He's trying for a quieter tone, but the assistants still look up at him.

"Did I not mention that?" Verstael says. "Again, I'll ask you to forgive me. His Radiance is quite enamored with my work, so he visits often."

Prompto thinks he hears one of the researchers snort. He ignores it in favor of trying not to panic.

Verstael rolls his eyes. "You'll be fine. Just keep your head down and only speak when spoken to. I doubt His Radiance will even notice you."

Prompto tries to cling to that as they make their way to the banquet hall. Ardyn joins them, dressed in a classic looking white suit with his hair pulled back into a short ponytail. He gives Prompto a grin that's positively sharkish, all teeth and glowering eyes. Prompto smiles back nervously.

Luxurious doesn't even begin to describe the banquet hall. It's like they've passed through a portal into another world. The walls are the same gleaming white as the rest of the facility, the floor a sleek black, but there are white and red curtains draped over the walls and ceiling, and a massive, twinkling chandelier suspended above the antique redwood dining table. At the head, an ornate looking chair—no, a _throne_ —sits, and an elderly man lounges back in it. His attention is on a pretty young woman to his right, who's laughing at something he said. To Prompto's eternal gratitude, he doesn't seem to notice them coming in.

"I told you," his dad says. He sits, and motions for Prompto to sit next to him, closer to the Emperor.

Prompto looks at him imploringly.

"Worry not, dear Prompto, _I'll_ shield you from His Radiance." Ardyn sits at his left with a flourish.

"You sitting next to him will only put _more_ attention on him," his dad argues.

"Come now, Vers. We both know the Emperor has no wish to talk to me here. We speak plenty in Gralea. Would he not wish to mingle with his other politicians from time to time?"

"You're a politician?" Prompto asks warily, watching as more and more people walk in. It's surprisingly unceremonious. The Emperor barely acknowledges the people coming in, and they don't stop to bow or greet him.

His dad must notice his confusion. "We shall all greet His Radiance together before the meal starts," he explains. "His Radiance dislikes having his conversations interrupted so often."

"Indeed," Ardyn says. "Though most everyone is already here. I expect the meal will start soon."

He's right. The seats fill up quickly enough, and when everyone’s done entering the room the Emperor sits up straight and fixes them all with a glare that could scare off a pack of rampaging behemoths. Prompto stands with everyone else and bows, murmuring “thank you for gracing us with your presence, Your Radiance,” before sitting back down and waiting for the food.

Each course is rolled out on silver carts and quickly set on the table, starting with the Emperor. The first serving is a soup, steaming hot, with plenty of vegetables and spices. Prompto is extremely thankful he’s always been a fan of spicy food; the moment it touches his tongue he just barely avoids gagging. His dad laughs at him for the twitch in his expression.

“The subsequent courses will be less intense,” he murmurs. “Next we’ll have fish, a vegetable dish, garula steak, and finally a desert. By that time, there should be no spice at all.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Prompto croaks. His dad watches every first bite he takes for the rest of the meal, offering him a water glass when necessary, and laughing when not.

The meal continues without much incident. As his dad said would happen, the Emperor doesn’t even notice Prompto’s presence. He keeps to talking to the woman sitting next to him, and occasionally other people around the table. The atmosphere would almost be comfortable, if not for the stiff dress wear and four different forks laid on the table in front of him, which Ardyn has to instruct him on how to use. Somewhere around the third course a girl comes in holding a bottle of wine. There’s no label, but with how severely the glass is polished, Prompto assumes it’s expensive.

Ardyn plucks the bottle from her hands before she can take it to the Emperor. He taps a fork against it, and a hush falls over the table as everyone turns to look. Prompto squirms in his seat.

“If I may have everyone’s attention,” Ardyn says, as if he doesn’t already have everyone’s attention. “Something quite spectacular has happened at this facility. Some of you may be aware of the existence of Chief Besithia’s lost child, who was abducted from our native land when he was only a babe.”

“Izunia isn’t native to Niflheim, is he?” someone murmurs.

“Just recently, father and son have been reunited.” Ardyn turns to Prompto, bringing the room’s attention with him. A sweat breaks out over Prompto’s forehead. “I think it's right to mark the occasion with a toast. Unless His Radiance minds?”

The Emperor of Niflheim looks Prompto up and down with his beady, pale blue eyes. Then he smiles. It’s nothing like King Regis’s smile, all kind and fatherly; this smile is shrewd, and it makes a shiver run down Prompto’s spine.

“What a _handsome_ boy,” Iedolas Aldercapt says. Prompto freezes. His dad places a calming hand on his wrist. “Of course I’ll permit this toast. As you said, Chancellor, this is a once in a lifetime occasion.”

Is this real? Is Prompto actually going to give a _toast_ in front of the Emperor of the nation that’s at war with his own? Did he just call Ardyn the _Chancellor?_ Did His Radiance, Emperor Iedolas Aldercapt, just _come on to him?_ What the fuck. What the _fuck._ Prompto doesn’t have time to process any of it, because the wine is swiftly being poured into everyone’s glasses. The whole table take up their cups, waiting for Prompto to speak. The Emperor glances over him again; his gaze feels like ice and fire all at once.

Prompto stands jerkily. All eyes are on him. He tries to stop the hand holding his wine glass from shaking.

“Poor kid,” someone whispers, and for some reason that’s all he needs to break through the terror gripping him.

“So, uh. Good evening, everyone. Your Radiance.” Prompto gives a sort of half bow that he really, really hopes is good enough. The Emperor nods in his direction. “This has been a crazy few weeks for me, and my dad.” Verstael smiles at him, a push to keep going. “I just wanted to say that this facility, and the work everyone does here, is incredible. What I’ve seen here is beyond anything I thought was even possible.” _Its eyes were blue. Blue like his own._ “The hospitality I’ve been shown in Niflheim is unmatched.”

“We are known for such things,” His Radiance muses. “Lucis has a long way to go before it reaches our level of brilliance.”

Prompto doesn’t agree. “I can’t argue with that, Your Radiance,” he says. “I’d like to propose a toast, to the work that’s done here, to His Radiance, and to my father, Chief Besithia.”

“Wait, Besithia seriously has a son? Didn’t seem like the fatherly type to me,” someone mutters.

“Quiet, the kid’s standing right there.”

“Here, here!” the woman sitting at the Emperor’s side calls. The Emperor himself rolls his eyes, but doesn’t move to drink.

“Prompto,” Verstael murmurs. “You made the toast. You drink first.”

Prompto blushes hard. “Right,” he murmurs. “Cheers!” And he drinks.

The wine is a red, and sweet. It goes down his throat in a pleasant way. After he swallows his mouthful, he sees a few more people take sips of their own, before—

He coughs. There’s a tickling sensation in his throat, one that starts burning upwards, from his stomach to his esophagus to his mouth. His vision spots black. The last thing he sees before passing out is Ardyn, his eyes glowing yellow like molten iron, two suns in the dark shadows that swallow him whole. He takes a long gulp of his wine, and smiles.

\---

He wakes up slowly. His whole body aches, the kind of burn that scratches unpleasantly just below the skin. Prompto whimpers on instinct as a rush of pain dances over his nerves. He feels like he’s just been put on fire, then hosed off with freezing water. There’s a voice coming into focus, one that’s familiar, that he’s known for a long, long time.

He blinks his eyes open. At first there’s a green sheen over everything, and the image is distorted, like he’s looking at it from underwater. Then it’s gone, and there’s just a white ceiling, bright lights, and his dad looking down at him.

“Prompto,” Verstael says. “I was so worried.”

Prompto coughs. His throat is unbearably dry. His dad props up his back, and then there’s a glass being pressed to his lips. As Prompto drinks, he glances over at his father’s expression.

It’s remarkably blank, looking down at the bed as if there’s nothing interesting going on. It makes Prompto’s blood run colder than the tundra outside.

“What happened?” he croaks as soon as he’s able to speak.

“The wine was poisoned,” Verstael says. “We checked it after you and the other guests who drank passed out. It contained quite a toxic substance. Really, it’s a miracle _you_ survived.”

“What do you mean? Did the others…?”

“Ah, yes. Unfortunately, all the rest who drank the poisoned wine died. As I said,” Verstael grins again, that odd, out of place grin, “you are an interesting specimen indeed.”

“Dad,” Prompto says shakily, struggling to sit up on his own, leaning away from Verstael’s arms. “What’s going on?”

“There appears to be an assassin in the facility. Shame, really. It’s been a while since such an intruder broke through our security measures. But no matter—I’m sure we’ll find the culprit soon.”

“Are they… are they after the Emperor, or…”

“Oh, I doubt that. You see, we’re on the precipice of a rather controversial breakthrough here. I’ve heard some rumblings of discontent from the political side of things; some fear us dabbling in what they might call _unnatural_ subjects. In fact,” Verstael rearranges himself on the seat next to Prompto’s hospital cot, drawing one leg over the other casually like he’s talking about the weather instead of murder, “I’m certain the assassin is after _me._ ”

“You,” Prompto repeats.

“Yes. Me. And, by extension, you.” Prompto can’t help but feel like he’s being backed into a corner. He can’t figure a way out. “Since this involves you now, why not agree to help us out?”

He coughs a little. “Help you how?”

Verstael pats his hand. The fatherly affection in the gesture is almost enough to placate him, but Prompto’s brain keeps bringing up everything that’s been just slightly _off_ since he got to the facility; the weapons, Ardyn’s warning, Verstael’s behavior. The babies. He even thinks back to Noctis’s warning. _This guy could be manipulating you._

“Find the assassin,” Verstael says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “I’m sure it won’t take you long. Now, it seems you’re all better, so why don’t we head back to your room? The Emperor has already left, so there’s no need to go and say goodbye. A shame. He seemed to like you.”

Verstael helps him walk. By the time they get there, Prompto is shivering and holding onto his thin hospital robe with tightly clenched fists. His dad pats his cheek once they get through the door.

“I’m going to review the security details for the facility. It would do good to have more MTs around in the wake of this unfortunate incident,” he says. “Take your time resting. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Wait,” Prompto says. Verstael does, his hands behind his back. “Did you… did you know? That the wine was poisoned?”

“Of course not,” his dad says, and the weight in Prompto’s chest dissipates somewhat. “I had no idea they would poison the _wine."_

He leaves without waiting for Prompto to say goodbye. Prompto stares at the door, still shivering. He reaches down into his bag and pulls out his phone, unused for the past two days. His chat with Noctis stares at him accusingly.

_hey, noct, this is crazy, but i think you were right. my dad’s been acting really weird, and there’s these crazy experiments going on, and i almost died. i’m gonna come home because i’m way in over my head here_

He hits send. The phone tries for only a second before it says _message failed to send._ Prompto taps it again. And again. And again until he glances up on his screen and realizes he has no service. He tries every inch of his room, stands on his bed and dresser and raises the phone to the ceiling, and still nothing. He has no internet connection, either. Nothing even comes up when he tries to search for networks.

Okay, no problem. He’ll head outside tomorrow, when his legs feel less like jelly, and he’ll try again. It’ll be fine.

Everything will be just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let the bad things begin ;) also, the appearance of the prompt!  
> tfw you don't realize you've been kidnapped by your own dad until it's too late :(


	4. Trust and Loyalty

He wakes up the next morning feeling worse than before. The nightmares had returned, rapid fire images of daemons and silent babies, the stinging sensation of needles all over his body, the discordant sound of metal scraping against metal. He barely slept through it all, jolting awake sweaty and frantic several times an hour. He takes a shower in the communal bathroom, hoping the hot water will help wake him up. The heat is so comfortable it just serves to make him more sleepy.

No one stops him on his way through the halls, even when he steps outside into the freezing cold. He stands just inside the tall barbed wire fence, waving his phone around like an idiot and regretting not wearing at least three more layers. No matter what he does, he can't get a signal. He waits a solid thirty minutes before he goes back inside, takes another hot shower, and knocks on his dad’s door.

Verstael opens the door with a smile. The sight of it does a little to ease his nerves. He’s probably just been misinterpreting things—his dad would never put him in danger. Right? "Prompto. Good morning."

"Dad," Prompto says, shoving his hands in his pockets to hide the way they’re shaking. "I can't get any service with my phone."

"And why would you need that?" Verstael asks. He takes Prompto by the shoulders and starts steering him down the hall, away from their rooms. “If you need something, you can simply ask me.”

"I just want to call my friend," Prompto murmurs, trying to escape the feeling he's doing something wrong, and falling.

"I don't think that's necessary," Verstael says. "Besides that, there's a jamming field around the entire facility, extending far into the mountain range. The confidential work we do here is far too important to risk allowing contact with the outside world. You understand."

Prompto feels like he's stepped out into the snow again; there’s a coldness creeping over his skin. "Well, do you have internet?"

"Somehow, I get the sense you aren't happy here," his dad says suddenly. His tone is nonchalant, but it still has Prompto's heart pumping fast. "Insomnia is far more dangerous than my labs, you know. It’s filled with hatred for those of Niflheimr blood. Do you want to go back into the viper's den, son?"

 _This place is the viper's den, not Insomnia,_ Prompto thinks abruptly, but he doesn’t dare say it. "No. I just want to talk to my friend."

Verstael is still smiling. "Is this 'friend' the Prince's advisor or his shield? Or perhaps the Prince himself?"

They reach the end of the residential halls. Prompto laughs awkwardly. "I don't know what you're talking about—"

"Do not insult my intelligence," Verstael snaps. Prompto jolts back, and the danger dissipates quickly, like smoke. "Forgive me, son, I simply get irritated when people lie to me."

"Right," Prompto says shakily.

“I know you’re just having trouble adjusting. It’s understandable that you’re homesick, as misplaced as it is.” They reach one of the labs. Verstael rests his hand on the door handle. “But that feeling will pass in time, you’ll see.”

“I’m not sure that’s how homesickness works,” Prompto says, cringing at his own backtalk.

“As I said, you’ll see I’m right eventually. Although…” His dad presses down on the door handle slightly, not quite opening it. The way he draws out the moment makes Prompto uncomfortable. “I’m a tad concerned you’re planning on breaking your promise.”

“Promise?” Prompto echoes.

“You agreed to help find our assassin, didn't you?”

"Did I?" Prompto says, his voice getting weaker with every word he speaks to his dad.

“Naturally.” Verstael’s smile drops a little. “You're my son, after all.”

His dad steps through the door, leaving Prompto behind. He stays there, uncertain, thinking _stupid, stupid, stupid. You should have thought this through._

_You should have listened to Noct._

\---

There’s no way he can stay. Prompto awkwardly asks the receptionist about the snowmobile he’d ridden there under the guise of wanting to go on a ride through the snow drifts. He’s certainly not trying to _leave,_ no ma’am. Just wanted to know if it was still in the small garage, where he parked it. The receptionist glances at her computer for a few seconds before telling him it’s been moved to a larger garage, where all the vehicles at the facility are stored. He’ll need Chief Besithia’s permission to get it out; she can call him if he wants her to.

Prompto very quickly insists that it’s okay, he’ll just ask his dad later. He leaves feeling even more panicked than before.

Worse than that, perhaps, are the patrols of MTs now roaming the facility. The other residents pay them no mind, but Prompto can’t help but follow their robotic movements, the way they pick up guns and bazookas and grenades from reloading stations with no hesitation, no shake in their hands. One of them catches him staring and stares back, its red eyes unblinking, burning into Prompto’s vision. He can’t stop thinking about the blue eyes behind them, behind the metal mask the trooper wears. Blue like Prompto’s. Blue like Verstael’s.

“No,” he whispers, shoving his hand under the wristband and scratching the barcode with blunt nails. “I’m not like you. I can’t be.”

“Can’t be what?”

Prompto nearly has a heart attack at Ardyn’s sudden appearance. He hadn’t heard his footsteps, but then he wasn’t really paying attention. Ardyn’s hair is pulled back into a short ponytail today, and he’s wearing a lab coat, probably to stay Verstael’s anger. Prompto manages to squeak out a small hello before he’s power walking away.

Ardyn matches his pace easily. “What’s got you in such a hurry? Problems with daddy dearest?”

“Nope,” Prompto says.

“Really? And here I thought you looked a little frightened.” Ardyn fixes him with an unreadable look. “Are you alright?”

Prompto slows his pace ever so slightly. Ardyn _had_ told him not to trust Verstael from the get go, and while he turned out to be sort-of right, Prompto can’t bring himself to like the guy. He seems just slightly off. Besides that, he’s the one who suggested Prompto make that toast. Prompto can’t imagine it was just a harmless gesture; he must have some sort of game.

Isn’t he being too hard on Ardyn, though? And his dad, too. Maybe he’s just sad his only son is so eager to get back to his adoptive home. Maybe it’s normal procedure in Niflheim to let your son get poisoned, rope him into cracking an assassination plot, and refusing to let him contact his friends.

Maybe. But not likely.

He grunts as a headache creeps up on him. When he glances at Ardyn again, he thinks he sees flecks of fire in his irises, a hint of black liquid around his mouth. He blinks and it’s gone.

Ardyn is still looking at him. “Well?”

“I’m fine,” Prompto reiterates.

“Glad to hear it!” He’s back to his boisterous, overbearing self. Prompto flinches as the volume makes his head throb. “I’m ever so pleased to know you’re well. Last night’s banquet was quite the doozy. I even heard Chief Besithia is trying to set you up to catch the crook who masterminded all of it. Quite the task for a boy, nay?”

“Yeah. Quite the task alright,” Prompto says. Shit, he doesn’t even know how to go about conducting an investigation. He can’t even find his way back to his room without getting lost. And he’s a target, too, apparently. What if he dies, killed in his sleep? It hits hi then, how precarious his safety is right now. He could actually die in the middle of nowhere, an ocean away from home.

Ardyn laughs darkly, jostling him out of his panic induced haze. Belatedly, Prompto realizes he’s been scratching his palms with his nails. “Tough situation, isn’t it? Allow me to offer a word of advice.”

Prompto stares.

“As the son of the Chief of the First Magitek Production Facility, you have access to most of the compound, and a large amount of the documents being stored here—at least those on paper. If you use some ingenuity, I’m sure you could find a way to access the rest.” He tips a hat Prompto hadn’t even noticed him wearing. “As long as you put forth an honest effort, I’m sure it’ll work out fine. Just make sure not to get caught by our cheery murderer, hm?”

“Why would I need to snoop around Dad’s research to catch a murderer?” Prompto asks.

“Well, an assassin wouldn’t be targeting him if there wasn’t something here worth killing someone over, isn’t that right?” Ardyn turns and swaggers off, dramatically sweeping around a corner. “Good luck finding it.”

“Wait!” Prompto yells, and runs after Ardyn, having found the ability to move again. When he rounds the corner, Ardyn is gone. There’s nothing but him and the hallway, empty except for a weapons station holding an impressive assortment of sniper rifles.

“Okay,” Prompto says. “Fine, _Chancellor_. Thanks for the advice. I’ll figure out the rest on my own.”

He wanders around the rest of the facility, feeling vulnerable without his Crownsguard gun. He should probably talk to his dad about it. He _might_ be able to convince his dad to give him a simple pistol. It would be irresponsible to have him poke around looking for an assassin without a way to protect himself.

He’s starting to suspect, though, that his dad isn’t exactly the responsible type.

The facility is massive, so he doesn’t catch sight of Verstael for most of the day. He focuses on making a mental map of the place, memorizing every hallway, every room, every twist and turn. Most of the people he passes pay him no mind, preferring to continue working rather than bother the Chief’s son.

The entire time, in between going over his map in his head and twitching his fingers around a weapon that isn’t there, he thinks about ways he could get the hell out of here. He’s no professional, hasn’t even passed his Crownsguard training yet, so there’s no way in hell he’s capable of doing what his dad is asking of him. He has to find some way to escape, or get word out.

If he could find a way to access the hanger garage, that would be ideal, but one look at it dashes his hopes. It’s swarming with MTs and human guards, all of them wielding huge, ugly-looking weapons. Some of the MTs even have battle axes, massive and gleaming with melting ice, looking very capable of smashing a peron’s ribs. Or skull. Prompto creeps around the garage at a distance, checking each and every angle. It’s the most well guarded part of the facility he’s seen. There’s no way he’s getting in.

He can’t just walk back to Gralea, either. The ride was far, far too long to make on foot. Maybe he could’ve handled it if this was Lucis, where the weather is milder, but Niflheim’s temperatures are below zero even during the day. He can’t imagine what it would be like outside at night. And with both MTs hiding in the mountains and daemons lurking in the shadows? Flexitusks and behemoths roaming freely? Prompto wouldn’t stand a chance. To even try, he’d need to steal a good weapon, a machine gun or a rifle, maybe, a ton of ammo, winter clothes, a tent, a map of the area… he’d need to plan in advance, too, take the right routes to avoid guard patrols and make it to a haven at night. It’s a complicated and risky plan. He has to save it for a last resort.

Gods, why didn’t he just insist he meet his dad at his manor in Gralea instead?

Getting a message out might be easier. His dad said there was a jamming field around the whole facility; he has no idea how far into the mountains it extends, but it’s likely too far for him to just walk out of it, place a call, and walk back without anyone noticing. Getting caught would defeat the whole point. There has to be internet, but his phone can’t find it and his dad isn’t giving him access. Maybe if he hops on a computer, he can send out an email.

But what if that’s traced? What if all information sent out of the facility has to be approved? It makes sense the computers would be monitored heavily, if no one is allowed to talk to the outside world. He could ask, but… would anyone here actually help him? His dad is clearly well-liked. Ardyn is the _Chancellor,_ so Prompto can’t rely on him.

He’s alone. Totally alone.

 _That’s okay, you’ve been alone most of your life,_ he thinks to himself, trying to stay positive. He ducks into a random room as an MT patrol stomps past, footsteps regular to the point of sounding robotic. _You can deal._

His breaths even out into little stutters as he cracks the door open and watches the MTs round a corner. It’s only once the noise of their creaking joints is gone that he hears the soft cough behind him.

Prompto startles and jumps around. The woman who had been laughing at the Emperor’s jokes last night stares back at him, her red lips parted in slight shock. She’s sitting at what must be her desk, a can of ebony in one hand and a manila folder in the other. Prompto chokes on his own spit, then tries to force the cough into a laugh in a pathetic attempt to salvage his dignity.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” he says. “I just, uh…”

“They freak you out, too?” she says, her lips curling into a sympathetic smile. Her voice is quieter than it had been last night. “I get it. I’ve been here for a year now and I’m still not used to the way they move. Freaks me out.”

Prompto lets out a deep breath, and with it a huge chunk of the tension stored in his body. It seems he’s not the _only_ sane one here. “They’re pretty freaky.” He winces at his own words; they seem cruel, knowing where those soldiers come from.

“Are you okay?” the woman asks, making Prompto jolt again. “You seem pretty panicky.”

“I…” he grabs a rolling chair from another desk and jerks it around. He only realizes how tired he is once he sits down. His legs ache. How long has he been walking? Hours? “Just, you know. Last night.”

The woman nods. She sets the coffee down and organizes the folder into a stack on her desk. “We don’t get incidents like that often, and especially not when the Emperor visits. Whoever did it has balls. It’s a miracle you survived.”

“I guess. I heard everyone else…” Prompto frowns. He can’t remember much from after he took his first sip, but he’s sure he saw Ardyn drinking. “Wait a second. Did Ardyn drink any?”

“The Chancellor?” She taps a finger to her chin. “Not that I saw. And trust me, I was looking in that direction. I was watching you, actually. I know how tough it is, having the Emperor’s attention. I felt bad.”

There’s a faint look of disgust on her face, but it’s directed towards her feet—towards herself. Prompto knows that feeling; slimy, dirty, like there’s something writhing under your skin. An uncomfortable sensation that makes you want to disappear. He’d felt it plenty last night. “I could say the same to you.”

“Want to stay here a while?” she offers. “My name’s Lesca, by the way. I work alone more often than not, so it’ll be quiet here until dinner time.”

“Thank you,” Prompto says, and slumps forward. “Seriously. Thanks.”

Lesca nods, and goes back to work. The tapping from her computer continues, periodically breaking up so she can drink her afternoon coffee. Prompto lets his head go empty for the first time in days. He thinks about absolutely nothing. Not the assassin, not his dad, not babies in tanks. Not Ardyn’s unsettling manner, or the burning self-hatred screaming at him for being stupid, for letting himself believe someone wanted him with no ulterior motives involved.

He sniffles. Noctis wanted him. And Ignis and Gladio, too. Prompto should have known better than to doubt they were telling the truth; they aren’t liars. If they said they wanted Prompto regardless of where he was born, he should have believed him.

He’ll apologize once he gets back home. If they’re willing to see him, that is, after he doubted them, doubted their _country_. For royalty, that second part might actually be worse, but he’ll still try. He has to.

If he gets back home at all.

Lesca clears her throat. “You okay, um…?”

“Prompto,” he says miserably. “My name’s Prompto.”

“Prompto.” Lesca looks between him and her computer. Her hands flex. “If there’s anything I can do,” she says, then stops, worrying her lip between her teeth.

Prompto’s eyes widen. There _is_ something she can do. “I’m guessing all the computers here are monitored, right? And outgoing messages have to be approved?”

“Yeah, of course,” she says. “Why?”

“I want to… I want to send a message to my adoptive parents,” Prompto says, blushing hard through the lie. He knows it’s showing up on his pale skin; he can only hope she mistakes it as embarrassment. “Dad—er, Chief Besithia—doesn’t want me to. Which I totally get.” He scratches the back of his head. “There’s a jamming field around the facility so I can’t use my phone, and Dad wouldn't approve of any emails I send, so, um.”

“You want me to send a letter for you?” Lesca asks, and although she’s looking at him like he’s a child who said something amusing Prompto still sighs in relief.

“That sounds perfect. If it’s possible.”

Lesca nods. She’s paying closer attention to him now, her coffee and folders set aside. Her voice is slow. “This life is hard, to be honest. A lot of us here have families we can’t contact. I have a husband and little boy, myself. It’s possible to write letters and slip them into cargo that’s already cleared for transport. There’s a guy at the train station in Gralea who takes care of sending them for us.” She takes out a blank paper, attaches it to a clipboard, and passes it over, along with a pen. “They’re in Lucis, right?”

“Is that a problem?” Prompto asks.

Lesca rummages through one of her desk drawers. “Not at all. Our guy takes them to the national post office, and there’s no embargo on communications there currently. It should go through, no problem.” She hands over an envelope. “Just make sure the address is neatly written.”

Prompto writes while Lesca goes back to work. It’s a short note, just saying he’s in trouble and needs help getting back to Lucis. He triple folds it so the ink won’t show through the envelope, then writes Noctis’s apartment address as the recipient. He uses the pseudonym that’s always put on Noctis’s mail when it’s sent off to his apartment, a precaution to both keep his address private and to stop curious mail carries from stealing the crown prince’s mail. He doesn’t mark a sender. If this gets returned to the facility, he doesn’t want it mistakenly brought back to his dad.

“It’s done,” he says, handing the sealed letter over to Lesca.

“I’ll send it off tonight,” she says. “Don’t worry about postage, I’ll handle it.”

“I know I already said it, but thank you,” Prompto says, trying to inject all the sincerity he can into the words. “Thank you so much.”

“It’s no problem. I’m glad to help the Chief’s son,” she says, laughing awkwardly. “Even if it means going behind the Chief’s back, I guess. Man, isn’t that a contradiction?”

Prompto thanks her again, fixes his hair and smooths his shirt down, and heads back out into the hallway. He avoids all the MT patrols on his way back to his room, keeping his head down so the people he passes don't talk to him. He steals a peek at a clock in one of the break rooms—it's only eight in the evening, but it feels much, much later. All Prompto can think about is how much he wants to curl up in bed and forget that the past two days ever happened. Or maybe the past two weeks. Gods, he hopes Noct gets his message soon. He's not even sure what he's hoping for; maybe His Majesty can do something about it, use some political loophole to force his dad to let him leave soon. Or maybe send the Kingsglaive after him.

Ha. As if they’d risk their best soldiers on him.

He stops in his room long enough to grab a change of clothes before heading to the showers for his third wash that day. The hot water feels good as sin, and he spends an inordinate amount of time simply standing under the spray. It's only after someone else walks in that he gets to cleaning up.

The trek back to his room is murder. His legs feel boneless; he can barely walk. He wishes, fiercely, that he was back home, where the bathroom was only a short distance from his bedroom. The wish intensifies when he opens the door and finds his dad sitting on his bed.

Verstael pats the space next to him. "Sit."

Prompto swallows. "Dad, I'm tired. I want to go to bed."

"Sit."

Prompto sits.

"I wanted to ask you about something that happened today," Verstael says. "I'd like to believe this is just an unfortunate misunderstanding between the two of us, but as Chief of this facility, I cannot ignore it."

"Of course," Prompto replies, desperately trying to think about what this could be about. Did someone see him creeping around the garage? Did the receptionist tell Verstael he asked about the snowmobile? Had someone reported him just for exploring the facility?

His dad reaches into the pocket of his lab coat. When he withdraws his hand, he's holding a letter, addressed to an apartment in Insomnia. There’s no sender. Prompto's heart pounds painfully in his chest.

"I’m certain I mentioned the communications black-out when we spoke this morning," he continues. "Didn't I?"

"No," Prompto whispers. "What did you do to her?"

"Ah, perhaps I _thought_ I had said something, but only implied it when I informed you of the jamming field. Forgive me. With so much on my mind, it's difficult for me to keep track of such petty conversations.”

"What did you do to Lesca?!"

"Such a funny question," Verstael says. He opens the already broken seal of the envelope and pulls out the letter. "I rewarded her, of course, for her loyalty. You see, I value loyalty very highly."

Prompto's breaths come short. His hands clench into fists. He should've asked for the gun earlier. He should have _stolen_ a gun earlier. His lips turn down into a snarl, an expression he thinks he's only made a few times in his entire life.

"Really now, Prompto. You disappoint me." There's a disapproving look there, a chiding one. It doesn't look parental anymore, just indifferent. "You, my flesh and blood, should be capable of more loyalty than a mere researcher who has never, up until this moment, caught my attention." He stands and makes a show of reading over the letter, his eyebrow raising. He seems a giant—tall where Prompto is small, powerful where Prompto is weak. "Fealty to one's parents is considered a virtue in Niflheim."

Prompto shoots up, ready to shout, to snatch back the letter and demand to be sent home, when Verstael backhands him clean across the face. The pain comes after the sound, a ringing noise followed by an avalanche of stinging nerves all across his cheek. Prompto crashes into the desk with the movement, the sudden impact bruising his abdomen. He gasps, shocked.

He shouldn't be surprised. His father was alright with letting him go to a banquet he expected to be dangerous, has let him roam around unarmed with someone dangerous nearby, has even demanded he play spy at the risk of his own life. But those things are distant, unemotional. This, with the pain so obvious and violent, can't be anything but real.

"Remember this lesson. I expect nothing but excellence from you, Prompto. Do not disappoint me with such drivel again."

His footsteps echo over the tile as he leaves. Prompto gets up ages later, his cheek still stinging.

\---

He sees Lesca the next day. She's filing some documents, a can of ebony in her hand. She catches his eye across the room and shrugs, looking only mildly apologetic. "Can't betray the Chief. Sorry, kid."

That is the moment when Prompto realizes he has no friends here. He has no support, no allies, nothing. He has only himself and what little strength he can find within. That little sliver of self confidence, of drive.

And say what you will about Prompto Argentum, but he isn't a quitter.

He spends the rest of the day memorizing even more of the facility’s layout; where all the halls lead, where all the weapons are stored, the works. Then he goes back to his room and thinks through his options. He's messed up his only chance of getting a message out; his dad will be more vigilant from now on. For now he has to assume it's not possible for him to ask for help. He's in the viper's den, now.

That doesn't mean he has to just blindly do what his dad is asking, though. He'll go along with this farce, sure, but he's going to try and warp this situation to his advantage. The assassin, whoever they are, has a grudge against his dad. If Prompto can track them down successfully, he might be able to negotiate with them to help get him out. Maybe he could offer to work as a distraction, or even help kill Verstael…

...despite everything, is that really something he's okay with doing? Killing his own father? Lucis values fealty and respect towards one's parents, too. Surely blood counts for something.

Prompto shakes his head, then buries his face into his pillow. No. He can't let sentimentality confuse him, not when that's what got him into this mess in the first place. He has to stay firm. Track down the assassin, make a deal. Kill his father, if that's what's necessary.

He can do this. He _has_ to. If not for himself, then for Noctis. He has to make it back home so he can apologize to his first ever friend for hurting him—and for being an idiot.

Prompto closes his eyes and listens to the sounds of the facility. There's nothing the low hum of the heating system and the MTs patrolling back and forth. Every thirty minutes one such patrol passes through the residential sections. Their heavy footsteps crash against the tile floor, metal joints creaking. Prompto counts the steps as they fade away.

\---

The next morning, after he eats a filling breakfast of oatmeal and fruit, Prompto bows at the waist before Chief Besithia in one of his many offices.

"Forgive me for my behavior yesterday," Prompto says, hoping he can the furious blush before he's expected to raise his head. "I disrespected you."

"You did, yes, but it's all in the past now," his dad says idly. Prompto glances up. He's tapping away at a tablet, only half paying attention. There's a maniacal glee in his eye; whatever experiment he's working on now, he must be enjoying the results.

Prompto clears his throat when it becomes clear Verstael has forgotten he's there.

"Did you require something?" his dad asks.

"A weapon," Prompto says. "It's pretty irresponsible to send me out to catch a bad guy without giving me something to protect myself with, yeah?"

His dad snorts. "It would be, yes." He sets his tablet down and marches over to a heavy, locked door, where he waves a key card in front of an access panel. It opens to reveal a weapons vault. Prompto stares uncomfortably. There are weapons outside, weapons in the hallways, and apparently weapons in locked rooms adjacent to the offices. Even for a military base, it seems excessive.

"Do you have a preference?" Verstael asks.

"A handgun," Prompto says.

His dad looks at him for just long enough that Prompto shifts from foot to foot, worrying he's said something wrong, before he grabs his tablet back up. He types a few things, using his body to block Prompto from seeing, then removes a small handgun from the vault. "You can reload at any weapons vault in the facility."

"Thanks," Prompto mutters.

“You seem ungrateful,” Verstael notes. “I could always take the gun back.”

“No! No,” Prompto says. “I’m grateful. Thank you, Dad.”

Verstael nods, then goes back to his tablet. Prompto loads his handgun, going over the facility’s layout in his head one more time. He swallows uncomfortably when he notices his dad stealing glances at him, tapping away on his tablet intermittently. Prompto leaves the room, not bothering to tell his dad where he’s going. He doesn’t really know, himself.

He finds himself retracing the path they took when his dad first showed him around, only a few days earlier. He passes the room with the floodlights and the high security lab with the scientists in hazmat suits. As usual, the lab techs and research assistants running around pay him no mind—not even when he steps quietly back into the room with the tanks and shuts the door.

He can tell right away something is wrong. There’s no soft green glow coming from the far wall. Prompto shuffles forward in the darkness, not daring to hit the light switch. His fingers find the cool glass of the tanks. His hands shake as he feels around them, trying to detect the warmth that comes with living human bodies. There’s nothing. At some point between then and now, the children have been moved elsewhere.

He does his best to rub the tears away before he heads out, keenly aware of how red the skin around his eyes gets when he cries. He steps into the office next door, but before he can make for the hallway, he hears the two lab techs whispering to each other a mere five feet away. Curious, Prompto ducks down, hiding behind a filing cabinet.

“Man, I’m telling you, you heard wrong.”

“I did not! The Deputy High Commander is coming to review our work.”

There’s a snicker. “Look, I know what you think you heard, but he hates Chief Besithia _and_ Chancellor Izunia. He’d never visit.”

There’s a scrape of chairs against the floor. Prompto ducks further back into the doorway as the techs fuss with their lab coats and papers. “I guess you’ll just have to be surprised when he shows up in a few days. Hope you’ll prepare your presentation on the new shock troopers with him in mind.”

“If by some chance in hell you’re right, I’m sure my work for Chief Besithia will be good enough for that spoiled Tenebraen prince…”

The door opens and slams shut, and the voices fade, muffled as the techs walk further and further away. Prompto breathes out. Being invisible might be a good thing; if no one pays him any mind, it makes it that much easier to spy on people. To learn things. Of course, if no one notices him, it could also mean it’ll be easier for the assassin to kill him.

He brushes his hand against the holster of his gun. “I’ll find them before they can axe me,” Prompto assures himself. “May the fastest one win.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompto: haha king regis would never send the glaive after me :')  
> meanwhile noctis is submitting his fifth motion for a full scale invasion of niflheim after two days of no contact with prompto


	5. Unnatural Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: FIC RATING HAS UPDATED TO MATURE! this is related partially to the events of this chapter and partially to the events of future chapters. there are also updated tags/warnings, please check them out!

When he sneaks back to spy on his dad, Prompto has to hold in a gasp. Then a scream. One of the babies is on an examination table, completely motionless as his dad cuts into its chest. A few assistants stand by, watching disinterestedly. One of them takes the dead baby's hand, and, seemingly out of boredom, shatters its ring finger.

Prompto slinks back into the hall, drops to his knees, and shakes. He presses his hands into his eyes so hard sparks explode behind his eyelids. Then he stands on legs as weak as a newborn fawn's and heads to one of the nearby labs.

From what he can tell, the three types of rooms in this section of the facility are labs, offices, and file storage. He wants to exhaust the latter two as resources before he goes back to the labs and witnesses… _that_ again, or anything like it. Even if his dad says those babies aren't human, Prompto knows better. That man may be his father, but he didn't inherit the crazy gene.

With the image still floating in his mind, he doesn't think he's centered enough to spy on people, so offices are out. The file storage is likely his best bet right now.

His mental map leads him down the hall, through three adjacent rooms, and past an MT weapons station. The holster on his hip feels heavy as he sees a trooper reloading its machine gun. Its beady red eyes follow him as he walks past. He takes the next turn, eager to get away from the thousand-yard stare, and comes to a room marked ‘file storage, off limits.’ The door is unlocked, opening with ease.

The room is empty. Its brown walls and cracked floor tiles mark it as older than the rest of the facility, and likely uncared for. It strikes him as odd, that a files room can be so run down when the hallway outside literally sparkles. Maybe there aren’t enough funds to finance both the labs and renovations for random storage rooms.

Prompto runs a hand along one of the metal shelves. It holds rows of heavy boxes, all marked up in black ink. He flips open a box labeled ‘research notes,’ and finds meticulously organized papers about experiments dating up to five, ten, even fifteen years ago. All of it has to do with something simply referred to as a ‘plasmodium.’ Prompto vaguely remembers his dad having mentioned that before, something about it causing diseases. He really wishes he’d payed more attention in high school biology; all the papers are almost incomprehensible, using heavy vernacular and lots and lot of abbreviations. After only a few minutes, he pushes the box back onto the shelf with a huff.

The next box is slightly more interesting. It’s about daemons, detailing different species, abilities, geographic distribution—even combat abilities and weaknesses, both elemental and physical. It’s the type of information that would be invaluable to hunters and the Kingsglaive. Prompto finds one file that makes his blood run cold; there’s a grainy picture of a beast on it, hulking in a too-small cage, its hairy white arms contrasting starkly with the wiry metal legs holding it up. The photograph is accompanied by a few pages of notes, starting with _Barbarus, day thirty-three. Subject still refusing to drink water. The plasmodium appears to be keeping its organic tissues alive, but subject has grown increasingly agitated. Evidence suggests it is experiencing delirium. Plan to forcibly detain subject and apply intravenous fluid when subject becomes too weak to resist._

The rest of the packet is filled of blacked-out words, only a few phrases legible here and there beneath the ink. The bottom of the last page has been stamped REMAINING INFORMATION CLASSIFIED. THESE PAPERS TO BE DESTROYED.

They must have been forgotten about before anyone got around to destroying them. They seem important, despite the abundance of blacked out phrases and words. Prompto tucks the papers away in his jacket, hoping no one ever bothers to inspect these files to check for theft, and puts the box back like nothing happened.

He’s careful to make sure the hallway is empty as he slinks out. It’s possible he’s being captured on security cameras, but there’s nothing he can do about that. He doesn’t have the kind of skill to completely shut down the facility’s security systems. He just has to trust that Ardyn was telling the truth, and that as the Chief’s son he has free reign of most of the facility’s records. If he can unlock a door, he has to proceed assuming he can read whatever he finds inside. He doesn’t think stealing records would be allowed under any circumstances, though, so he decides to keep the papers tucked up next to his abdomen to himself.

He spends the next few hours checking various unlocked file rooms, finding nothing of interest. Just daily reports on budgets and stock and a whole host of medical experiments he can’t wrap his head around. The last room he comes to is one he’d eyed the previous day; the door frame is fancy, and there are armed guards outside. There’s a plaque on the door reading _Storage. Authorized Personnel Only._ There are few guarded doors in the facility, so no doubt what’s behind this one is important.

He stops in front of one of the MTs. “Hey.”

The soldier doesn’t react.

“So, can I just—”

The moment his hand reaches for the door, the MT grabs his wrist. Prompto gasps as its fist grinds against his bones, and yanks his hand back. The MT lets go.

“Got it, I’m not authorized,” he says. “I’ll just be going, now.”

He keeps walking, making two left turns and then a right, and his map leads him to what he has to assume is a security center. He walks to it with purpose, patting his face until the fear in his expression drops away. He has to seem casual. When he gets to the door he knocks without any hesitation, then stands around kicking his feet until the locks are undone and a heavyset, angry-looking guard opens the door.

“Hiya,” Prompto says. “I’m Chief Besithia’s son. I don’t think we’ve met?”

“We haven’t,” the guy says gruffly. He looks at Prompto with what might be disdain, but he can’t fathom what he’s done to piss the guy off already. Maybe that’s just how he looks at everyone. “What business do you have here?”

“I want to learn more about the facility,” Prompto says. His heart is jackhammering; he desperately hopes the guy can’t hear it somehow. “It’s so _amazing._ Dad’s busy today, so I figured I’d go around myself and see if anyone’s willing to show me where they work.”

“This is a security center,” the man says, still looking unimpressed, “not a tourist attraction. Get going.”

“I know,” Prompto says, trying to think of something to say that’ll get him inside. He suddenly remembers the Emperor’s disdain for anything Lucian. “Just, Insomnia’s security is so bad, you know? It’s even easy to sneak in and out of the Citadel. I’ve done it dozens of times. I wanted to see how Niflheimr security holds up.”

That gets him a reaction. The man raises one eyebrow, and his mouth drops out of its grimace. “You aren’t planning on passing our secrets back to the Lucians, are you?”

“‘Course not,” Prompto says. He really hopes he isn’t visibly sweating. “I’m Niflheimr. The fact that Lucians abducted me when I was a baby didn’t change that.”

They stare at each other long enough for Prompto to become uncomfortable. Finally, the man snickers and scuffs Prompto on the head.

"Fine, kid. Can't deny I feel sorry for you, growing up in Lucis." He props the door open with his foot, gesturing for Prompto to come inside. "Must've been tough."

"You can say that again," Prompto murmurs. He's too busy taking in the security room to throw out a better response. It’s the same gleaming white of the rest of the facility, but there’s a wide wall covered in TVs displaying security camera footage, a complicated control panel beneath it. On the other side of the room is a desk with a laptop sitting on it. Prompto has seen the Crownsguard main security room; the buttons and levers are probably for locking doors, cutting electricity, even shutting down the facility… There certainly isn’t enough for the entire compound, though. This security room must only service this specific area.

There’s a woman sitting at the control panel; she gives Prom a passing look before going back to tapping away at the buttons. The male security guard claps his hands together and gestures widely at the room. “Behold, top of the line Niflheimr security.”

“Wow,” Prompto says. He doesn’t have to pretend to be in awe, as it _is_ just slightly more impressive than Crownsguard security. He steps closer to the screens to inspect them. There’s at least two cameras in every room and hallway, including the door he walked past earlier. The MTs are still outside. There doesn’t appear to be one inside the room, though. Are the documents inside really so important even security can’t look at them?

The man takes his seat and practically drags Prompto over to the chair. Prompto stands by it, expecting the guy to sit down, and yelps when he slaps Prompto’s ass and sends him stumbling towards the chair. The woman beside him snorts, saying nothing. He can only hope the glowing blue monitors mask the redness in his cheeks. What the hell is it with people being so creepy towards him around here? First he has to deal with Iedolas, and now this guy?

He desperately hopes the guy didn’t think he was flirting earlier. He really doesn’t want to be expected to “pay back” this favor.

Luckily, the man doesn’t seem eager to take it further. He leans over the counter next to Prompto and starts pointing out the different parts of the console. “These control the cameras. We can freeze them, technically, but that’s against protocol unless there’s a special VIP visiting who can’t be filmed. Over here controls the venting system, there’s options to release nerve gas if that’s what’s needed to stop intruders, these lock doors, this button puts our section on lockdown…”

Prompto listens to everything, nodding along. He folds the instructions into his memory. When the guy starts talking about less important things, specs and construction and the like, he looks for an opening to freeze the cameras without their notice. When the woman gets up to go and fuss with the other computer, and the man is busy leaning forward to tap his finger against the various screens, Prompto sneaks his hands up to the panel. He’s hyper aware of every move, holding in his breath as his fingers brush over the buttons. He presses the one for the camera he needs; the screen freezes, an almost infinitesimal difference considering how motionless the MTs are. Nervously, Prompto draws his hand back to a more casual position on the edge of the control panel.

When the guard looks back to him, he frowns. “Hands off the panel, kid. You might knock something with your elbow.”

Prompto smiles in a way he hopes looks sheepish instead of anxious as hell. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he says, going back to showing off. The woman returns. Prompto tries to act as natural as possible, waiting for the guy to get bored and kick him out, all while hoping they won’t notice the motionless camera.

They don’t. Five minutes that feel more like five years pass, and then the man is saying “alright, that’s as much time as I can spare for you, kid. Get out of here.”

“Sure thing, thanks for showing me around,” Prompto says, jumping out of the chair.

As he heads for the door, moving at a casual pace even though he wants to run, he hears the woman say something that makes him shiver. “Why’d you bother showing it the controls?”

“It might get fixed up properly one day. With arms that skinny, no way it'd be a useful soldier, but it might be fit to help with security detail.”

“Still, kind of a risky move.” Prompto taps the panel on the door. It slides open audibly. The two keep talking as if he wasn’t there. “Why’d you slap its ass, though? Don’t tell me you want to fuck one of those things.”

“Was curious to see how it'd react. It’s weird, seeing one of them act so human.” Prompto steps through the door, his limbs feeling like lead. The door slides shut behind him. As it goes, Prompto hears the guy add, “whatever, though. Not like the Chief’s going to let it leave.”

He’s careful not to run to the hallway, although he admits he does power walk a little. He wants to be away from that room and that conversation as quickly as possible. _Fixed up. Soldier. One of those_ things. Prompto scratches at his wristband again, muttering “it’s not true, I’m human, I’m me, not one of them. Not…”

By the time he rounds the corner, he’s regained a semblance of normality. He feels like the world is rocking, a boat he can’t get off of, the waves blurring the images in front of him. Despite his dreamlike state, it takes minimal effort to dispatch the MTs. He whips his gun out of the holster, firing it on autopilot, using the same natural talent that prompted Cor to issue him a weapon so early in his training. The MTs go down silently, buckling at the knees. One of them raises an arm and reaches for him. Prompto thinks he sees a child behind its eyes, scared and confused, reaching out for a parent. Then the damn thing dies, leaving the black blood flowing out of the hole in its head as the only motion in the hall.

Clearly the shots, muffled by the silencer, didn’t alert anyone else to the situation. Prompto reaches for the door then jerkily pulls back, cursing himself for forgetting, of all things, to steal a damn _key card._

Something odd happens, though. The door beeps and opens. Prompto is left frozen in the hallway, waiting for an alarm to sound. It doesn’t.

When he finally gets control of himself, he drags the MT’s bodies into the office and shoves them against the wall. He tears off his jacket and uses it to rub up the blood from the floor. There are still streaks of black over the tile, but it’s better than just leaving the blood there to pool and fester.

It takes a few fumbles to get the door to close again, but once it does Prompto is left alone in the dark with only the two dead MTs as company. Their red eyes glow slightly even in death, unblinking dots of light in the shadows of the room. Prompto feels around for where he knows the light switch must be and flicks it on. The bulb is old and flickering, but the room is almost as nice as the rest of the facility: clean, slick, only a thin layer of dust lining the shelves. There’s a small table with a single computer on it, currently in sleep mode.

Prompto watches the MTs nervously, watching for signs of movement. He doesn’t think one of those creatures could survive a gunshot wound, but who knows? Anything is possible.

 _You just murdered a child,_ his brain whispers, and Prompto firmly says no, he had to, and even then his dad said they used _mature bodies_ for MTs.

Mature bodies like his own.

Prompto lunges for the computer. He tries waving his barcode at the scanner attached to its side, but the screen flashes AUTHORIZATION DENIED, ACCESS RESTRICTED. Prompto bites his lip so hard it turns white.

He goes for closest box instead. It’s all minor stuff, nothing that catches his eye, and he pushes it back with a huff. He doesn’t know how much time he has before someone notices the MTs are gone from their post and comes in to investigate. He has to move quickly.

Maybe it’s odd that all of the files he’s come across aren’t digitized, but Prompto imagines there must be some sort of security in that. You can’t hack into a cardboard box from a distance. They’d also act as backups, in case there are digital files and they get deleted somehow. Prompto thinks about that and all sorts of technical things, strategy and the whys and hows of the storage room, because if he doesn’t he feels like he’s going to burst at the seems.

The next two boxes contain more information about daemons, about the plasmodium, and those topics seem to be connected but with how much his head is swimming Prompto can’t focus on them. He moves on, hauling a heavy, dusty box off the shelf, and slams it against the ground. It nearly slumps over, and he has to steady it. His eyes jolt back to the MTs, checking to see if the sound somehow roused them; they’re as still as they’ve always been.

The lid of the box comes off with ease. The first paper Prompto tears out is titled MT PRODUCTION NOTES, DAY 208. It’s marked as having been written by Verstael Besithia. Prompto only reads a few lines before he tosses it away and keeps digging. The next paper is by his dad, and the third by Ardyn, as is the forth—it keeps going, those two names, repeated over and over in the by lines. It’s different from the other papers, which boast the names of various scientists. This is only the work of two men, his dad and the Chancellor, with no other parties involved. For some reason, the fact makes drops of sweat run down Prompto’s neck, cooling his shirt collar.

He keeps reading, skimming the papers with blurry vision. _Project Deathless has shown immense potential. His Radiance has given approval to continue experiments,_ and _Use of mature subjects for testing has resulted in ego death, making subjects unfit or unstable for battle. It may be possible to use younger individuals in their place,_ and finally _The first MTs created with children as hosts have been successful. Now all that’s left is to find a way to produce enough infants for mass use in the army. I think I have a rather novel idea._

The next paper he draws out is on cloning. The first page is a photograph, showing a face. _His_ face. Verstael's face.

Prompto drops the paper and stumbles back until he hits the wall. He hears the box slump over onto the floor at a distance, the papers scattering, the MTs’ eyes unblinking in the corner. In a daze, he rips the wristband off and stares at it. The numbers scream back at him. _05953234\. N-iP01357._ It all comes forth in his mind violently, his feelings of not belonging, his natural affinity with firearms, his uncannily good memory. The nightmares. His resemblance to his "dad."

“Fuck,” Prompto whispers, sliding to the floor. His blood is a rush of ocean in his ears, his skin prickling with dots of pain like he’s being stabbed by a thousand needles. His mind is racing a mile a minute, and his mouth opens to try and alleviate the stream of thoughts and feelings and horrible, awful realizations about what, exactly, he is. “Fuck fuck fuck. Oh my gods. can’t be one of them, I’m a person, I’m _human,_ I’m—fuck! This is wrong, it’s _wrong!”_ He falls forward onto his knees, drawing them up in an attempt to protect himself, or maybe an attempt to hide. A sob rips through his body, leaving his ribs aching and his throat sore. “Noct, please, I’m sorry.”

“I’m afraid your prince isn’t here,” a silky voice replies.

Prompto shivers and shakes, unwilling to listen. He doesn’t even know if the voice is real; he hadn’t heard the door open, can’t hear any footsteps. Still, Ardyn’s breath tickles his ear as he whispers, “come now, child, it’s not good to deny reality. If you keep running that pretty little mind of yours in circles, you’re liable to hurt yourself.”

Prompto lashes out with an arm, trying to jam Ardyn’s face with his elbow, break his nose, knock out teeth, but the voice laughs and flitters around him like a moth attracted to a light. Prompto manages to force his eyes open for a moment, and he sees that the room is back in shadow, the light turned off. The MTs still stare at him. He buries his face in his knees and sobs.

“Poor, dear thing,” Ardyn coos. “In need of a parent’s comfort, are you? Shall I fetch Chief Besithia?”

“No,” Prompto gasps. “Don’t you—don’t you _dare._ ”

“Oh, but I think I will. He’d be so upset to hear you’re in such distress, after all,” Ardyn says. This time there are footsteps, heading back for the door. Without thinking, with the cold calculated violence of a machine, Prompto surges into an offensive stance, shoots the voice straight and true. There’s a gurgling sound, a flicker of the lights, then silence.

The room is just as it should be. The corpses are gone. The floor is polished to a shine. There’s no Ardyn. The boxes are back on the shelf, with all the papers nestled safely inside.

The door slides open just as evenly as before. There are two new MTs outside; Prompto doesn’t know how he knows, but they’re different from the ones before. They ignore him as he slinks out into the hallway, intending to walk back to his room.

His feet take him to his dad’s lab instead. When he looks up from the floor, he finds Verstael staring right at him, his ice blue eyes blatantly unimpressed.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he notes simply.

“Were you going to tell me?” Prompto asks, his voice tiny and far away. Verstael flicks his eyes over his assistants one by one. They all gather up their things and leave.

Once they’re alone, Verstael puts his hands on his hips and huffs. “Well? Are you going to speak?”

“Were you going to _tell me?”_ Prompto shouts, suddenly so angry he can’t hold it in. He feels like his heart’s going to impale itself on his ribs.

Verstael stares at him, and for one terrible-wonderful moment Prompto thinks he’s going to provide some explanation, a fatherly look, just _something,_ before Verstael smirks. “So you’ve figured out the truth of your origins, then? I’m surprised it took so long. Then again, the cloning process is fraught with problems. It’s not guaranteed even a copy of someone such as myself would have any amount of intelligence.”

“What—” Prompto sucks in a breath of stale air. He can’t breath all of a sudden. The sensation sends him crashing to the ground. “No. You’re wrong. I can’t be a—I can’t be.”

There’s a click, and then tapping. Prompto sees Verstael typing on his tablet again, the sound coming in just slightly late. He’s muttering to himself. Prompto can only catch a few words, but the ones he does hear only make him feel worse—”may be suffering ego death, how disappointing, was hoping to gather evidence in support of the MT spy program”—and he keels over, throwing up breakfast all over the floor.

Verstael recoils in disgust. “How unsanitary. You are aware this is a lab, aren’t you?”

“Dad, why—” Prompto blinks back tears. His gun is in his hand—when did that happen, exactly?—and he does his best to aim it at Verstael despite how hard he’s shaking. “Do you even think of me as a person?!”

“Of course not,” Verstael says, clear as day. “You are not a person. You’re not even an animal.” He goes back to his clipboard, unbothered by Prompto’s finger on the trigger. “You are nothing more than an object: my property.”

 _You’re my best friend, Prom, not my servant,_ Noctis had said to him once, smiling brilliantly as he refused to let Prompto do his homework for him. _Take a load off, will you?_

“ _No!”_ Prompto yells, and shoots.

The bullet ricochetes off the metal table and lodges itself into the wall behind him. Prompto shoots again and again, unable to make a shot even at close range with how erratic he is, all while Verstael watches him in detached interest.

“Are you done?” he asks, and maybe it’s dumb after everything that’s happened, but that’s the moment Prompto knows Verstael isn’t his dad and never was. That’s when he knows he’s the biggest idiot in the world.

 _Prom!_ Noctis had called to him. _Wait, please!_

 _If you’re still running after me,_ Prompto thinks, still pulling the trigger despite the fact that he’s out of bullets, _I hope you catch up soon._

Before he can turn tail and run—maybe back to his room, maybe outside to the mountains—there’s a resounding boom that shakes the walls and knocks computers off of desks. Prompto thinks he might be imagining it before Verstael yells “shit!” and clutches his tablet close. He falls hard to the ground as the building shakes again, and this time the boom is accompanied by screams, each of them shrill and coming from the hallway. Verstael throws himself over Prompro, probably trying to protect his _precious property_ , but Prompto shoves him off and tries to hit him in the head with the butt of his gun. Verstael growls and grabs at it, and the two of them wrestle for a moment before Verstael slams his elbow into Prompto’s chest, knocking out his air. The gun clatters to the ground. Prompto gasps, winded, but his eyes are clear and the noise outside is swiftly shocking him out of the state he’s been in.

There’s still screaming in the hallway, but the walls have stopped shaking. Verstael jumps to his feet and smashes the glass frame surrounding a button on the wall; the lights flash red, and an alarm begins to blare. He grabs the door handle. Prompto snatches up his gun and holds it defensively, ready to use it to bash in the skull of whatever comes through the door.

By the time the door swings all the way open, the screaming has slowed to a stop. Prompto eases closer, hearing gurgling noises and small gasps under the alarm. All of it is set to the backdrop of a faint pinging sound, like liquid dripping on metal. Verstael shows no caution, charging into the hall without fear.

“Well, this is rather unfortunate,” he says.

Prompto peers out the door, and if he hadn’t thrown up minutes earlier he’s sure he would’ve done so now. The assistants who fled the room for fear of betraying their Chief are scattered through the hallway, torn limbs and shorn bones hanging precariously on to one another, the broken bodies scarcely intact. With a jolt, Prompto realizes Lesca is among the not-yet-dead, her ribs cracked open and sticking out of her lab coat, staining the white fabric red. As the red emergency light dims and brightens rhythmically, Prompto watches her throat work, trying for words but only managing short, wet gasps. A man closer to them groans, and Prompto winces when he sees the way his legs are broken, snapped at ninety degree angles. He looks away, unable to take it in anymore.

“This must be the work of our assassin,” Verstael says. “Normally, I’d order a formal investigation to make sure, but there’s hardly a chance of there being two people willing to incite violence in my facility at the same time.”

“You could still call the police,” Prompto says waveringly, eyes darting back as Lesca cries out, a painful sound that quickly cuts away to nothing.

Verstael laughs, his silhouette painted red like the bodies beneath him. “Unnecessary. I have full faith in you, _son._ ”

\---

“What do you want,” Prompto growls, scratching at his wrist.

Ardyn leans against the desk. He’d let himself into Prompto’s room a few minutes prior. Since then, he’d simply looked around with a far away look in his eyes, waiting for Prompto to cave and speak first.

Delighted with his victory, Ardyn pouts in mock-sympathy. “I just wished to check up on my dear friend’s son. You’ve experienced quite a few frightful things recently. Perhaps a visit to the on site therapist is in order?”

“I don’t want any more ‘help’ from you,” Prompto spits. “Fuck off.”

“What venom! And when I haven’t done a single thing to hurt you.” Ardyn sighs dramatically. “Poor thing. Your daddy issues must be more severe than I thought, to have you lashing out like this.”

“What do you want?” Prompto snaps.

“Only to remind you not to give up,” Ardyn says. He retreats back to the door, letting it slide open. The light from the hallway is near blinding, making Ardyn appear as a black, expressionless silhouette. “You’ve been laying about for nearly two days, not eating, not bathing, and I’d wager not sleeping. If you don’t catch our little murderer, how do you ever expect to run home to your prince?”

Prompto ignores the slights in favor of the meaning behind the words. “Wait a minute. If I catch this bastard, you’ll let me go home?”

“But of course!” Ardyn says. He steps out into the hall, with only his hand remaining in the door frame. “It would be a massive waste of resources to detain you forever.”

Prompto hesitates, thinking. “What will you do if I refuse?”

“Well.” Ardyn removes his hand. The door slides shut slowly. “Verstael always needs new test subjects.”

The door closes with a click. Prompto sits there, unmoving, before unpacking a fresh change of clothes and heading for the bathroom.

He has a murderer to catch. Then he can see Noct.


	6. Power Struggle

By the next day, the bodies have been completely cleaned up. Prompto can’t force himself to look at the hallway, though; it’s as bright and clean as it had been before, but he still sees afterimages of Lesca, of blood and broken bones and hearts torn out of ribcages. Gods damn it, he’s not prepared for any of this. He’s a city boy, and though he knows a lot about the dangers of the city at night and strangers with guns, he’s never encountered violence like this before. Muggings? Keep compliant to avoid getting shot. Fist fights in the market? Do your worst, but don’t destroy any stalls. Domestic disputes in his crappy neighborhood in the middle of the night, with screaming and broken furniture? Let their kids stay at his house for the night, and don’t call the police. That’s only asking for trouble.

But this… isn’t killing more up Noctis’s alley? Prompto wonders if His Highness could handle this any better. He pretends he’s talking to Noctis sometimes when he can’t sleep, staring at the door, refusing to blink until his eyes water because someone could open it with a key card at any time and come sneaking in.

Both he and Verstael are targets. Prompto has to guard his life carefully.

But guarding Verstael’s life? Prompto has no idea if he wants to do that any more. The guy sees him as nothing more than property, an object that can be thrown away at will, and if the guard’s behavior is any indication that’s how most everyone in the facility sees him. He’s a nothing here. No one will mourn his death. They’ll probably just cut him up on an observation table and harvest his organs for experiments; he doubts Verstael would be kind enough to send his body home for a burial. He hopes he gets to see his adoptive parents again, so he can apologize to them. He’d thought they were bad, but Verstael is so, so much worse.

Now, as he sneaks around, he notices that people aren’t just ignoring him, they’re treating him like they would treat an MT. Do they all know? Have they known since the day he came to the facility? Are they just humoring the poor little machine that thinks it’s a real person?

(Don’t think about it. He can’t risk getting distracted now, of all times.)

He still visits the room with the tanks, checking to see if there are any more children there. He never finds any.

\---

It’s three more days of snooping around before he finds anything else useful. Verstael said he could examine the bodies for “clues” if he wanted to, but Prompto doesn’t want to accept any help from him, and besides that he doesn’t think he could handle seeing those corpses again. He’d rather follow Ardyn’s advice of sneaking information to try and discover the assassin’s motives. Right now, he’s looking for anything that seems controversial among the staff, or opposed to popular Niflheimr values.

He also considers that the security of the facility is supposedly top notch. The killer could be an employee, already inside the facility, hiding in plain sight. Waiting to strike. He tries not to let his suspicion and paranoia show on his face.

He avoids going back to the room with the information on Project Deathless, as the MT program is called. It’s unpleasant, and beyond that Prompto doubts there will be any more useful intel in there. The MT program is a resounding success, the crowning jewel of the First Magitek Production Facility’s research. Clearly no one here has the same problem he does with transforming children into soldiers.

The other files he checks are mostly about the plasmodium, which he’s starting to think might be more important than he originally thought. It’s mentioned everywhere, in both Project Deathless and medical papers, and usually information about daemons isn’t stored too far away. His tour of the facility, where Verstael showed him the lights they use for daemon training, keeps coming to the forefront of his mind.

Then there’s the papers he stole about Barbarus. He keeps looking at that photo, and the more he looks the more awful he feels. Based on what he can surmise from the blacked out words, it used to be a normal “yeti,” a varmint that lives in the surrounding mountain ranges, before it was spliced together with magitek. The juncture between its torso and skinny metal legs is in shadow in the photograph, but it appears to be dripping with something black, like a constantly bleeding open wound. Try as he may, he can’t find any more information about the damn thing.

For now, the information gathering has come to a halt. The assassin hasn’t struck again, but Prompto doesn’t feel like he can wait around for more bodies to pile up. Instead of trying to find more open doors or guards he can distract, he heads back to the labs, always, always careful to keep out of Verstael's sight.

There's something horribly painful about seeing him now. He just reminds Prompto of his own regrets, of being foolishly taken in by a too-good-to-be-true lie. It makes his heart clench up in pain; he can't stand it.

The lab assistants talk about nothing most of the time. The first three labs he listens in on, they're talking about the experiments, the reaction of plasmodium to different light sources—there it is again, it has to be important but Prompto can’t understand anything they’re saying—peppered with the occasional jab about someone's personal life. He learns way more about the dating scene of the First Magitek Production Facility than he ever needed or wanted to know.

He also learns that no one apparently gives a shit about the whole 'half the lab staff got brutally murdered' thing. The only time he hears it mentioned is when a woman references it in passing. The whole lab stops for a moment to lay their hands over their chests in respect, and then move on.

So, not only does Prompto mean nothing here, but life in general is cheap in Niflheim. Good to know.

At the end of his unproductive day, he decides to sneak into one more lab. It’s one of the smaller ones with only a few benches, a tiny centrifuge and a fume hood, and two lab techs working side by side. They're muttering rapidly over a solution sitting on a metal plate of sorts. The experiment _seems_ low stakes; there's a bean-like object in it, spinning. One of the techs is adding liquid through a dropper. The solution keeps blurring pink before the color is spun out of existence by the miniature whirlpool.

One of techs mutters "we need to make more base-indicator solution," and heads to the fume hood. Prompto sits down behind one of the counters, listening in.

"Damnit!" the lab tech shouts suddenly. "Did you forget to grab a new bottle when you finished with this one?"

"No," the other tech says stubbornly. "We don't _have_ any more. Stock room's empty."

"Are you kidding me?" There's a slamming sound, a door being opened and shut, and then cabinet doors clanging. "Seriously? How are we supposed to finish the experiment _now?_ "

"Dunno. Guess we'll just have to tell the Chief we don't have enough chemicals and hope he'll buy more."

Prompto edges along the base of the table, listening as they clean up their station with the rapid efficiency that comes with doing the same thing over and over again, every day. With a horrible pang, Prompto misses his retail job. Glassware clinks, a sink turns on and off, and the two lab techs throw words at each other the entire time. "It's not a matter of buying new stuff. We don't have the funds."

“We'd have them if Besithia stopped obsessing over that plasmodium.”

"Keep your voice down," is the whispered reply. "We'd have supplies if His Radiance would just approve more funding."

They're heading to the door now, footsteps thumping loud over the sound of Prompto's own breathing. "He'd give us more funding if the Chief would just focus on experiments that show results. That daemons-as-soldiers project isn't going anywhere."

"Says you. That project is the future. The Emperor is just scared…"

Their voices cut out as the door swings shut. Without thinking, Prompto jumps out from behind the counter and races for the door. The two men have already started talking about something else—someone's birthday or somesuch. Prompto _could_ go up and talk to them, but when he remembers the guard's hand on his ass, the casual dehumanization, being called _it,_ he's not too eager to go looking for intel that way anymore.

He turns on his heel, tries to focus on what he _does_ know, and ignores everything awful that's happened recently. The Emperor isn't happy with how funds are being used currently, and is slashing funding as a result. And currently, the funds the facility does have are going to the “daemon project.”

That is, the project to use daemons as soldiers.

_“Those are for training daemons we’ve captured from the wild.”_

_"Why would you even want to tame daemons?"_

_"It will be easier for us to handle the swarms if we are able to control them."_

Fucking liar. He wants to use daemons to fight Lucis.

If the Emperor doesn't like the current experiments, slashing funding would be a good way to force Verstael to move on to something else. Verstael is stubborn, though, so he's willing to continue on with experiments that don't yield many results. And in that case…

Prompto's eyes widen. The Emperor could be behind the assassination attempts. And if he is, the assassin won't be willing to help Prompto at all.

"That's cool," Prompto mutters to himself. "I have a lead. That's better than nothing." He's got to pursue this, figure it out. If the Emperor isn't behind it, he'll start back at square one. If he is, maybe Verstael will keep his word and let Prompto go. Not that he's kept his word so far, but, well. There's no harm in hoping.

Prompto heads for the other laboratories. He sneaks through them one by one, half listening, half thinking. The dinner where he was poisoned was held in the Emperor's honor, and His Radiance hadn’t drank anything. He could have easily brought in the poisoned wine from outside the facility, or had it spiked with some chemical from the labs. If he’s going along with this line of thinking, the issue is finding out exactly _who_ the assassin is. He can narrow it down to people who came in with the Emperor… although the man could have hired someone inside, or placed someone in the facility months in advance. Hell, he’s the _Emperor._ He could probably just order someone to commit murder for him at the drop of a hat.

No, he can’t think like that. He’ll just end up panicking. For now, he has to get ahold of a list of the people who followed the Emperor into the facility, then check to see if any of them stuck around. He swerves through the hallways, blinking against the bright fluorescents that are growing more and more abrasive with each passing day. He could get a list of people checking in and out of the facility at reception, probably. That means another walk outside in the snow.

Before he even tries, he swings through the rest of the labs, checking each one of them. He catches sight of Verstael in one of the break rooms, laughing with some lab techs over a can of ebony. Ardyn is next to him, smiling along. Prompto stays there, watching from behind the door frame, until Ardyn notices him. He places a hand on Verstael’s shoulder and stands casually. Prompto jerks back behind the door and waits.

Ardyn appears shortly, slipping through the door. “Is there something you need?”

“Exactly how much information do I have access to?” Prompto asks.

“What a broad question. I daresay you’ll have to be more specific,” Ardyn says.

Prompto holds back a snarl. The Chancellor’s voice cuts into his thoughts like a knife, reminding him of that room, and what he learned there. “Do I have access to the records of people who enter and leave the facility?”

“No,” Ardyn says simply. “I’m afraid that’s above your paygrade. A list of those who _work_ here, however, would not be. Would you like one?”

“No, thank you,” Prompto says. “Have a nice day.”

He scurries off. He really, really doesn’t want to ask Ardyn or Verstael for any more help. He doesn’t trust either of them not to lead him in circles. Or use him as a lab rat to test for poison.

The thought makes him shudder. Prompto runs faster.

Before he goes, he stops by one of the weapons vaults. He hadn’t had a chance to reload his gun after killing those MTs; he doesn’t want anyone to see him at the vault, lest they realize he’s been using the gun. He doesn’t know why he thinks they’d care. The lock buzzes open as he waves his barcode in front of it. He loads his gun quickly, eyes darting up and down the hallway, watching for MTs, for Verstael, Ardyn, lab techs, guards. For anyone.

He wishes he was truly invisible. It would make this job a lot easier.

When he steps outside, his boots crunching in the snow, he looks up at the mountains, trying to imagine a way he can escape through them without getting shot. He feels like he’s moving through molasses, slowly getting stuck in place, unable to break free. Everything—the poisoning, Verstael, the MTs, the barcode (the barcode, Verstael lied about that, too, didn’t he? And all that lipservice about his mom, Prompto can’t believe he fell for that crap). The only thing keeping him from completely breaking down again is the bit of clarity that came with Ardyn’s promise, a voice in the back of his mind saying _you can see Noct if you survive this_ over and over again. He’d gotten himself into this mess, and he’s going to get himself out of it, if only so he can run back to Insomnia, throw himself at Noctis’s feet, and say he’s sorry until his friend forgives him.

He forgave Prompto for being Niflheimr. He has to be able to forgive _this_. He has to.

That is, assuming Prompto won’t be so tainted by this that he’ll be unfit to step foot near the Prince of Lucis ever again.

The sky is clouded over today, full of angry grey clouds and swirling snow. Prompto shivers in his too-thin sweatshirt as he jogs over to the reception building. The MT guards stare at him unfeelingly as he circles around the back. A human guard is checking a weapons reserve around the corner. Prompto waits for her to leave before he sneaks around and stands on his toes to peer in through a window. The receptionist is sitting inside at her desk, sipping at a cup of tea. Prompto sneaks in, opens the window, then ducks outside, backing up. After about ten meters, he stops. He coughs, throat dry, and cocks his gun. The receptionist’s head is still turned. He waits for her to set down her cup before he fires.

The rubber bullet slams straight into the back of her head. Prompto darts back into the building. She’s slumped over on the console, out cold. With sweaty hands, Prompto picks her up out of her chair and sets her on the ground. A line of blood oozes out of her wound and down onto his glove, and he grimaces.

“I’m really sorry,” he says, hoping he didn’t give her permanent brain damage.

He didn’t have a choice, he tells himself. It’s the same as when he killed the MTs.

The thing is, Verstael and Ardyn must both know that Prompto needs access to _all_ the facility’s information in order to properly investigate. And yet, there are things that are off access to him; human guards that won’t let him through certain doors, computers he can’t look through. Things that are ‘above his pay grade.’ If that’s the way they want to play it, he can’t waste his time snooping around and listening in to private conversations like a gossip anymore. He’s got to work for it, even if that means hurting people.

He doesn’t look at the woman on the ground as he taps at her computer, doesn’t think about how kindly she welcomed him when he got here. She works for his dad. He can’t trust her.

He can’t trust anyone.

A few taps on the keyboard and he finds what he’s looking for; a long file showing everyone who has entered and exited the facility in the past thirsty days. Prompto scrolls all the way back to when his name appears (listed as Prompto _Besithia_ ), then continues on from there. There’s about twenty names alongside _His Radiance Emperor Iedolas Aldercapt._ Prompto reads over each one carefully, and checks to see if all of them left. They did.

He stares at the names. This was his one lead, and it’s gone no where. It doesn’t matter if Aldercapt is behind the violence if the assassin isn’t one of the people who came with him. It could be anyone. He stares at the list, eyes burning, trying to make sense of all of it, until the receptionist groans.

Prompto jumps, turning to check on her. Her face is screwed up in pain; she isn’t conscious yet, but she will be soon. He jumps off the computer, setting it back to the way it was, and is about to run when it pings.

_New Message. Alert Level: Medium_

Prompto glances back at the woman. She doesn’t move. He clicks on the message.

_Deputy High Commander Nox Fleuret to depart Gralea tomorrow morning. Expected to arrive at First Magitek Production Facility at 1500 hours._

A spark of hope alights in Prompto’s heart. That’s _Lady Lunafreya’s_ older brother. If Prompto can manage to talk to him alone, he might be willing to help. He’s with the Niflheimr military, yes, but Luna is so sweet and kind—her brother _has_ to be the same way.

When he slinks out of the receptionist’s office, eyes darting around to check for guards, he sees a squad of MTs patrolling the outer section of the facility, unyielding against the angry wind. His mouth goes dry with a question he hadn’t considered before.

What if the assassin is a _MT?_

\---

Verstael summons him to dinner. Thank the gods it’s not another banquet, just a quiet father and son and weird not-step dad meal in a cleared out dining hall. Prompto pokes at a salad, made with fresh greens and fruit, and watches Verstael tear into a steak while Ardyn sips at a glass of wine.

“Are you alright?” Ardyn asks him halfway through the meal. “You’ve barely eaten a thing.”

Prompto wants to scream ‘you haven’t eaten anything either, shithead,’ but decides not to for the sake of keeping his head attached to his neck. “I’m not really hungry.”

“Oh? Did something happen to upset you?” Verstael asks, and Prompto feels like throwing a tantrum.

That won’t help, though. If Verstael is planning to ignore everything that’s happened, Prompto will, too. He can play their game. “Nothing happened, father.”

“My, how formal!” Ardyn says. “He’s really learning, isn’t he?”

“Of course,” Verstael says. “All he needed was a little discipline. Lucians let their children run wild, after all.”

Prompto bites the first five angry responses bubbling up inside of him. “They sure do! My adoptive parents _never_ hit me.”

The jab gets him no where. “And look how you turned out.”

Prompto can’t tell if that was an insult or not. He shoves a cut strawberry into his mouth, deciding to change the subject before he starts shouting. Or crying. They’re both equally possible right now. “So, the Emperor was an impressive guy.”

“Indeed. His Radiance has brought Niflheim into a new era of peace,” Verstael says, voice full of awe to the point that it sounds dishonest. Ardyn chuckles. “Do you have something to say, Chancellor?”

“Not at all,” Ardyn says. “I merely recall that His Radiance has had quite a bit of help over the years, especially as he grows in age.”

“Naturally,” Verstael agrees. “Which is why he feels so indebted to _me_.”

Prompto sips at his water, watching the two of them squabble. He says nothing.

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that. I’m the one who has advised him on domestic and military strategy all these years,” Ardyn says, “meanwhile, you have simply provided His Radiance with an army.”

“An army that has allowed him to conquer the world.” The irritation is palpable in Verstael’s voice now. “ _You_ are a mere advisor. You’re hardly irreplaceable.”

“You wound me, dear Chief,” Ardyn says. “And after all the help I’ve given you with your experiments! Why, you’d be nothing without me.”

“And without me, you’d still be rotting in the cave I found you in,” Verstael mutters.

Prompto keeps looking between them. He feels like he’s missing something important—like some vital information is passing right in front of him, and he can’t see it.

“This conversation is going no where,” Ardyn sighs. “Let’s leave it to the younger generation, shall we? Prompto, who do you think is more important to the Emperor?”

Prompto blanches at being put in the spotlight. Verstael’s eyes on him make his skin start to itch. “Me?”

“Well? What’s your perception?” Verstael says. He turns on the tablet sitting on the table—the damn thing is always at his side, Prompto notes with irritation—and hovers a finger above it. “Who do you wager is more important to His Radiance, Ardyn or myself?”

“I…” Prompto wonders if there’s a right answer for this. If he’ll get hit again if he gets it wrong. He turns to Verstael. “You said that you were working on a project that wasn’t popular? Something about it being _unnatural?_ ”

“True, but His Radiance supports us.”

Prompto lets a snarl slip. “That’s not what I heard.”

Verstael looks over him sharply. “And what, precisely, did you hear?”

He really, really hopes he isn’t messing this up. “Just that the Emperor is slashing your funding.”

“And you heard this from who, exactly?”

“No one in particular,” Prompto says, shoving another bite into his mouth. It feels like ash on his tongue, like lead in his stomach. “You’re the talk of the town.”

“Am I?” Verstael asks, his smile full of teeth. “But you know, Ardyn isn’t exactly near and dear to His Radiance’s heart either, these days. Something about him having too much power for someone in a mere advisory position.”

“It’s true, but he should know I would _never_ betray him,” Ardyn says, finishing off his wine. “Care for dessert, Prompto?”

“No thanks. I’m stuffed.” Prompto stands from the table. “Goodnight.”

Verstael waits until he’s already at the door, ready to go, before he speaks again. “By the way, Ardyn, one of our receptionists was attacked today. Did you hear?”

“Not at all. Enlighten me.”

“The doctors say she was shot with a rubber bullet. Horrible concussion, but I’ve been informed she’ll make a full recovery. Her computer appears to have been accessed, though.”

“Oh, my.” Prompto feels their eyes on him as he closes the door. “I wonder, whatever could the assailant have been after?”

His voice carries an odd cadence, one that stays with Prompto as he goes back to his room. He’s suddenly reminded of Ardyn drinking the poisoned wine, his eyes the color of egg yolk, and questions whether it really was a hallucination after all.

\---

Prompto waits for Ravus’s arrival the next day with bated breath. He doesn’t have any proof that he knows Lady Lunafreya; the letter she sent him is safe in his room, on the other side of the world. And yet, he can’t find it within himself to believe that this _won’t_ work out. It has to. Once he talks to Ravus, explains his situation, it’ll all be over; the danger, the nightmares, all the horrible things that are happening here. He’ll go back home and be a person again, not just a thing owned and controlled by his “father.” He’ll see Noctis again, and Ignis and Gladio and Cor, and his adoptive parents when they come home.

...how long until then, again? It feels like time is rushing past too quickly. He has no idea how long he’s been gone, just a vague sense that it’s been _too_ long.

He doesn’t expect Verstael to introduce him to Ravus, nor does he want him to. Verstael watches him like a halk, always typing away at his tablet. Prompto is sure he won’t be able to speak frankly or even invite Ravus somewhere private with Verstael watching.

He recalls, now, the conversation between the two lab techs; Ravus is here for a report on some new kind of MT. He’ll probably spend most of his time with Verstael and his lab buddies. Prompto has to catch him before that happens.

He doesn’t know why, exactly. Maybe he’s afraid Verstael will trick Ravus like he tricked Prompto, and Ravus will refuse to help him escape because of it. Then again, Ravus is a military commander, and twenty-something years old. There’s no way he’s as stupid and gullible as Prompto is.

He loiters around the outside of the facility after lunch, watching for airships. The cold bites through his jacket, and he has to walk in circles to keep his toes from freezing off. His breath puffs out in front of his face as white mist. The longer he waits, the more he frets, and the colder he gets, until his teeth are chattering. Eventually looking at all the white, shiny things in the world—snow, metal, the gleam of the sun off an MT’s armor—becomes too much, and he slides on his goggles.

Finally, in the late afternoon, an airship drops nearby. It lands for a few minutes, then rises back into the air. Prompto watches it with a sinking feeling, hoping his chances of escape aren’t rising with it.

One person approaches the facility. He has to be Ravus, with how he looks—Tenebraean platinum blonde hair, so pale it looks white, and white armor, accented with black and purple. Prompto watches from the shadows as he ducks into the receptionist’s office. The man in there is a sub while the usual receptionist recovers. Prompto shifts from foot to foot, trying not to let the guilt seep in along with the cold.

When Ravus comes back out, he makes a beeline for the facility. Prompto steps out into the sunlight, leaning against the cold metal exterior, and waits for Ravus to pass him.

“Hey,” he says, trying to keep his voice level.

Ravus’s head snaps towards him. His eyes, a stormy shade of blue that’s almost grey, narrow dangerously. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Prompto,” he says. “I’m Chief Besithia’s kid.”

“One of his clones, you mean,” Ravus says, and the cold-hearted statement is a shot in the heart, punching the air out of him. “Tell him whatever game this is part of, I’m not playing.”

“Wait,” Prompto says. Ravus turns away. “Wait a minute, dammit! I need help.”

“Don’t we all,” Ravus says flatly, still walking.

“I know Lady Lunafreya!”

That gets his attention. As he turns his coat flares out, all sharp edges, and Prompto catches the glint of a sword tucked away at his side, ready to be drawn at a moment’s notice. “What did you say, knave?”

“I know Lady Lunafreya,” Prompto repeats. “I saved her dog when we were kids.”

“Which one?” Ravus asks suspiciously.

“Pryna.”

There’s a pause. The wind howls through the pine trees beyond the fences. Then Ravus grunts and relaxes his shoulders.

He moves so quickly Prompto scarcely realizes he’s come closer until he grabs his arm. “This way, quickly.”

Prompto follows. They walk around to the side of the facility, Prompto struggling to keep up with Ravus’s military power-walk, until they’re standing in the shadow of the building. It feels like the temperature in the air drops twenty degrees.

“Gods, you’re shivering,” Ravus mutters, and it almost sounds kind. “Well? Speak.”

In that moment, his white hair—definitely white, not blonde like Prompto had first assumed—catches the light of the sun, and Ravus looks like a guardian angel. Prompto tries to take in a deep breath, but it catches on a gasp.

“Are you planning on speaking, or—”

“My name is Prompto Argentum,” he says, so fast he’s afraid the words are slurring together and Ravus won’t be able to understand him. “I’m from Lucis. When I was twelve I helped Pryna out when she was hurt, and Lady Lunafreya sent me a letter. She asked me to become Noct’s friend. So I did—I mean, it took me a few years but I did it, and now I’ve been besties with Noct since high school. But I got this letter a few weeks ago, right? And it was from Verstael, and he said he was my dad, so I came here to meet him, only apparently he’s not my dad and I’m just an MT clone that got rescued from some random military base years ago. Maybe this one? I don’t know. But the point is, now he and Ardyn aren’t letting me leave, I can’t contact anyone, and there’s this crazy assassin who’s killed a bunch of people and is targeting Verstael and me, too, I guess, and Verstael told me to catch them. But obviously I can’t do that! I’ve got, like, no relevant skills whatsoever, my resume could not be more empty. So I’m gonna die if I don’t get out. Please, you have to help me.”

Ravus stares at him. For a moment, Prompto is worried he really _did_ talk too fast, and Ravus didn’t understand anything. Then he clears his throat and says, “allow me to walk through this at my own pace. You’re from Insomnia? A friend of Prince Noctis’s?”

“Yes.”

“And you once saved my sister’s beloved pet.”

“Yes. I did that.”

“Now you’re here because you received a summons from Verstael Besithia, the maddest man in Niflheim, and decided to heed it for some inconceivable reason.”

Prompto sniffles. “Yeah. I, uh, did that, too.”

“So now your life is in danger, and you expect me to help you.”

“Please?”

Ravus breathes in deeply through his nose. His lips are a thin, pale line. Everything about him is pale, Prompto thinks, from his hair to his lips to the blue veins peeking through his skin. He looks even more of an ice prince than Noctis, all stiff posture and commanding presence. It makes Prompto’s stomach turn.

“Are you an idiot?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ravus arrives! unfortunately for prompto, he is a dick.


	7. Threshold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BIG WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER  
> new tags have been added for this chapter and the next. they are:  
> torture  
> denailing  
> tasers  
> humiliation  
> non consensual nudity  
> fat shaming (very brief but i figured i should tag it as this could be upsetting to some)  
> denailing is a method of torture and is exactly what it sounds like. tasers can be used for torture if they are used on someone repeatedly. the latter part of this chapter is entirely a depiction of a character (you can probably guess who ;) ) being tortured, in detail. i think it's covered by the graphic depictions of violence warning, but it's the most intense scene in the fic so far, so beware! owo

Okay, yes, Prompto can admit it. He probably is an idiot for all the shit he’s done over the past few weeks. He's an idiot for not listening to Noct, for believing his dad, for coming to Niflheim at all. He can admit it privately, to himself. Having Ravus say it, though? That’s something else.

“Only Noct gets to call me an idiot!” Prompto snaps, angry again.

Ravus sighs. “But of course. Allow me to rephrase my question; are you a dumbass?”

Prompto is sure his lips must look white from how hard he’s pressing them together. He doesn’t answer the question.

“As I thought. Listen close and listen well, MT. You are in Lucis no longer. This is _Niflheim._ This is the lion’s den.”

“I thought it was a viper’s den,” Prompto mutters.

“Perhaps that is a more apt metaphor. Regardless,” Ravus glances around, then leans closer, his presence as overwhelming as Verstael’s or Ardyn’s, “no one helps anyone in the Empire for nothing. You cannot expect handouts just because you are downtrodden. If you want something, you have to be willing to make a trade.”

“I am,” Prompto says. “I’m willing to do anything. _Please._ ”

“And what, exactly, do you think you have that will interest me? Do tell. What does a pampered Lucian boy have that can benefit me or my sister?” Ravus hisses. “You have no connections. I doubt you have any combat skills. You are too soft to be of any use here. My deepest apologies, but Verstael screwed you over from the start. You were never going to survive this.”

“But I’ve been learning things,” Prompto insists. He can feel the opportunity slipping through his fingers, hope turning to smoke, intangible and fleeting. “I can spy on people without them noticing. I’ve stolen information. If you want something, I can get it for you!”

Ravus looks remarkably uninterested. “If I wanted information from this facility, I would take it myself. I am in no need of your help.”

Prompto turns everything over in his head, trying to find something. “I can shoot. I have Crownsguard training.”

“Everyone in the military can shoot,” Ravus says.

Prompto has to hold back a whimper. “But, I—”

“Cease talking,” Ravus snaps. “I just told you, this is _Nilfheim_. There is no such thing here as a favor done out of the goodness of one’s heart. You offer your skills, your knowledge, even your body, but you do not _beg for kindness._ There is no kindness to be found in the tundra. Trust me, this, I know.”

Prompto winces. He’s cold to the point of numbness now, and his stomach is squirming, but, well. Anything to get out of here. “Do you, erm, _want_ my body…?”

Ravus stares at him with a look that could only be described as pity. “My gods, you are desperate.”

“I’ll do anything,” Prompto says again.

Ravus places an awkward hand on his shoulder. There’s a faint blush on his skin. It would almost be funny, if this situation wasn’t so horrible. “There’s more to it than a simple exchange of goods or… or services. I would be putting myself in an unfavorable position by helping you. If Chief Besithia and Chancellor Izunia are not letting you leave, then I cannot go against them. They’re too powerful for me to risk alienating.”

“If you came with me to Lucis, the King might offer you asylum,” Prompto says, desperate and willing to say anything, even if it’s pure nonsense. He can’t promise things like that. Not even _Noctis_ can promise things like that.

Ravus must know that, but he humors him anyway. “And leave my sister alone? I shall have to turn down your most generous offer. Lunafreya needs my protection. I cannot leave the Empire while she remains in Tenebrae.” He opens his mouth again, as if to say something else, then decides better of it. He pats Prompto’s shoulder awkwardly. “You’re freezing. Come inside and warm up.”

Prompto stands still as Ravus walks past him. There must be ice climbing up his boots, because he can’t force his feet to move. “You won’t help me, then.”

“No. Good luck.”

“You bastard!” The snow is falling again, little swirls of white that flutter around them as Ravus walks away. “You’d just let someone die when you could help?!”

“If helping them would put my sister at risk? No question,” Ravus calls back.

Prompto understands. By the gods, Prompto understands. He’d do anything for Noct, for Ignis, for Gladio, he knows the feeling of looking at someone and being so overwhelmed with love that he thinks _I’d kill for you._ _I’d_ die _for you._ He isn’t really angry, just… “You’re a cold-hearted, no good prince!”

“Indeed.”

“Lady Lunafreya wouldn’t leave me here. She’s a much better person than you!”

Ravus turns back and smiles wryly. “On that, we are in agreement.”

He isn’t angry, just horribly, terribly lonely.

Prompto stands there in the snow until he stops shivering. When he finally goes back inside, it’s past dinnertime. He curls up on his bed and closes his eyes to nightmares about the cold, frothy test tube he was born in, and the father who never cared about him at all.

\---

The next day, he doubles down. It’s pretty clear, now, that the project to use daemons as soldiers is what’s pissing people off. It’s evidently the only project the facility is working on that isn’t about MTs or medicine, is seeing very few returns, and is generally controversial among the staff. He has his motive, now, so all he needs to do is find the criminal.

The assassin can’t have come with the Emperor, must have been in the facility prior, but that doesn’t mean Prompto can’t track them down. He has to dig further into the daemon project, find out exactly _who_ disapproves, who might have followed the Emperor’s order, and maybe, if he has to, draw out the assassin himself. If the killer _does_ end up being an MT, it hardly matters; Prompto will just need to find out whoever gave it the order. If that person is no longer in the facility, he just trashes the corrupt MT and moves on. Simple.

Ha. _Simple._ Just another day in the life of resident dumbass Prompto Argentum.

Beyond all of that, there’s a chance that the Emperor is trying to get rid of Ardyn, too, if he’s so concerned about the guy’s influence. Prompto can only make himself focus on one thing at a time, though, or he feels like he’ll go nuts. Investigate the daemon project. Ignore Ravus. Ignore everything, except when it has to do with keeping himself alive.

The room with the floodlights, the one Verstael had showed him on his first day here, is empty when Prompto sneaks in. The lights are massive, towering above him. The ceiling is even higher. Shadows hang over the walls, stretching down towards the floor like dark water stains. For some reason, Prompto is reminded of his fever hallucination of Ardyn’s face as he drank the poisoned wine, and his throat dries up.

A quick survey of the room reveals nothing but a locked door on its far side. It’s industrial steel, with what looks like three separate locking mechanisms. When Prompto waves his barcode over it, one of them disables, but the other two remain active. He stares at the door, pouting, unwilling to just leave but also unable to think of a way through. He could just wait for someone to come by and go through the door, but the room is currently abandoned and Prompto is itching to do something productive. Waiting around for hours is very much not productive.

As he steps away, he thinks he hears something groan beyond the door, and ice forms in his blood. He waits, watching to see if the door will swing open. It doesn’t.

On his way out, he tries to think of a plan to get through. He could lie his way into another security office and steal something—a master keycard, maybe—but he’s reluctant to interact with anyone in the facility again after the disasters with Lesca and the security guard. If he can just figure out who has the keys for the door, he can steal them, and then… and then…

There’s a murmuring crowd up ahead. Prompto edges along the wall, keeping one ear facing the lab techs while his eyes remain fixed forward. When a hand rests on his arm, he jolts.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you,” a guy he doesn’t recognize says. “Glad to see you, kid. The Chief and Chancellor Izunia have been looking for you.”

“Oh?” Prompto says, thinking _no no no, godsdamnit,_ hell _no._ Just when he thought they’d leave him alone.

Before he can come up with an excuse—whoops, sorry, having diarrhea right now, gotta go to the bathroom! or something—the guy turns around and shouts, “Chief! Found your son!”

Verstael steps out of the room the techs are crowded around. He’s dressed in his red ceremonial armor again, his blonde hair slicked back. He regards Prompto with a falsely warm expression. “Ah, there you are. Come now, I wish to show you something.”

_I couldn’t give less of a flying fuck what you ‘wish to show me,’_ Prompto thinks, but he knows better than to say it out loud. Each step towards the door feels like a slow march towards his own coffin. There’s something in the air, uncomfortable and oppressive, that’s magnified by the clinical look Verstael gives him.

Ravus is in the room, Prompto notes with a grimace. He has the decency to nod respectfully in Prompto’s direction, but doesn’t say anything. When Verstael introduces them to each other, he pretends not to know who Prompto is.

“What are you doing here,” Prompto mutters to Ravus as Verstael heads over to where Ardyn is leaning against the wall, holding a cup of coffee.

“I’m here for what I came for,” Ravus replies, his arms behind his back and his posture straight, standing at attention. “A report on the newest model of MTs for combat.”

“Great. More weapons to bully Lucis,” Prompto deadpans.

Ravus bristles. “If your country hadn’t abandoned the rest of the world to Niflheim, perhaps—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Prompto feels a little bad at how tense Ravus’s shoulders are; he knows as well as anyone what happened in Tenebrae so many years ago. He can’t even imagine how Ravus must feel about it. But if he wanted Prompto to be sympathetic, well, he shouldn’t have been such an ass.

Prompto isn’t angry about it anymore, though, and hasn’t been for hours. He’s just resigned, and sad, and maybe a little frantic.

A few researchers are at the front of the lab, fiddling with a projector screen. Verstael goes over to help them, the perfect picture of a kind boss, then retreats back to Prompto and Ravus. Prompto thanks whatever gods are watching out for him, because Ardyn stays where he is against the wall. He doesn’t think he could deal with both of them right now.

The researchers launch into a presentation, firing off schematics and technicalities, using words that, up until this very point, Prompto was not aware were words. He glances over to Verstael with every slide that goes by, wondering what he’s playing at here. There’s no need for Prompto to listen to this. It’s just cutting into his investigation time. Beyond that, Prompto can barely understand what they’re talking about, so it doesn’t even matter if this is meant to upset him, or if Verstael is trying to show off. It’s all just meaningless chatter.

Verstael catches his eye and smirks, and Prompto’s stomach churns.

“I believe it’s time for a more up close demonstration,” Verstael says.

There’s a shift in the room’s energy, a bolt of electricity, and the researchers nod excitedly. A door hidden behind a set of cabinets opens. Through it walks an MT, weaponless, with red armor. Prompto notices the way Ravus stands up straighter, interest running along his spine, and the researchers poke at the MT’s body, prodding at its parts as if it were a doll.

_You don’t have the right to be angry,_ Prompto thinks as they talk more schematics, more technicalities, _you killed some of those machines yourself. They’re barely human. Don’t let it upset you._

His inner voice sounds like Verstael.

Before Prompto can be properly disgusted with himself, researcher no. 1 says “and now, a demonstration of its capabilities, and guides the MT towards a small chamber embedded in the wall. A glass door slides shut, a lock is put into place, and the researcher barks an order.

Red electricity starts racing up and down the MT’s arms. It shakes, body convulsing, and within seconds it explodes, black ichor and metal bits shattering against the glass. The noise is deafening, the light blinding. Prompto yelps and keels over, covering his ears.

No one else seems as surprised, although Ravus’s next breath is a stutter. “It’s a bomb,”

“A moving bomb,” Verstael says. “Capable of concealing itself among its brethren, and pursuing targets on the ground.”

Prompto’s hope for some semblance of sanity falls flat when Ravus makes a pleased noise. “These creatures will be incredibly useful, not only in battle, but in disrupting supply lines and communications between Insomnia and the outer Lucian territories.”

“I am glad to see we’re on the same page,” Verstael says. Prompto clenches his fists, and says nothing.

As the researchers huddle around Ravus, eager to answer his questions, Prompto turns on his heel to leave. Verstael stops him with a gentle hand on his shoulder; Prompto has to force himself not to shoot Verstael in the face. One thing at a time. No killing.

For now.

“How goes the investigation, son?” Verstael asks. Ardyn is still across the room, sipping at his coffee, but from the smirk on his face assures Prompto that he can hear everything.

“It’s going fine,” Prompto says.

“I’m glad to hear it. What have you discovered thus far?”

Prompto worries his lip, glancing at the researchers and Ravus, but they seem completely uncaring about his presence. He lowers his voice anyway. “I think it’s the Emperor. I mean, he’s the one who hired the assassin. It has to do with the project to use daemons in battle, and maybe a little with Ardyn, too.”

“I see,” Vertstael says. “And have you any idea who the assassin is?”

“No,” Prompto admits. At Verstael’s disappointed expression, he hastily adds, “I have some ideas, though.”

“Honestly. A shame.” Verstael sighs. “It’s been nearly a week and a half, now, and you’ve scarcely discovered a thing, despite the fact that you’ve been a witness to both incidents of violence. Perhaps I was a fool to entrust you with such a task. You may be suited to other endeavours.”

Prompto’s eyes widen. First he misses his chance with Ravus, and now this chance of freedom is on the line, too? “No, I can do it. Just… just give me more time.”

Verstael hums, making a show of considering his request. “I doubt you’ll be able to do more with additional time, seeing as you’ve found nothing of significant use so far, and no hard evidence. Really, Prompto? You ‘think’ His Radiance is involved? His Radiance _is_ Niflheim. He’s _always_ involved.”

“I…”

“Besides that, those poor lab techs were not merely killed, but slaughtered. There is a limited number of persons in this facility who could do such a thing. Do you truly not understand?”

Prompto stutters. “I think it might have been an MT.”

Verstael groans. “Such willful ignorance. Even though you’ve seen…”

“Seen what?” Prompto asks.

“No matter. You may be useful, yet,” Verstael says cryptically. His coat billows behind him as he leaves, shutting the door behind him.

Prompto glances around, his heart thudding. Ardyn is gone, too, while Ravus has remained to talk to the researchers. He casts Prompto a glance, and his eyes darken.

There’s something in the air, something implying that Prompto has failed some sort of test. He bolts, refusing to believe that he’s failed just yet.

He just needs to work harder. Then everything will be alright.

\---

Two days later, and he’s back at the room with the floodlights again, staring helplessly at the ceiling. He’s been desperately trying to figure out what Verstael had meant, but his head is swimming. He’s hit a dead end. The project in question is super top-level security. He can’t find any information on it. None of the staff he’s listening in on seem to actually be working on it. He can’t enter the locked room. And, apparently, Verstael is getting tired of humoring him. Prompto is terrified to ask him or Ardyn for help. What if they take that as an admission that he isn’t good enough for this job? Or any job? What if they do something even more awful than keeping him trapped here?

What if they’re already planning on it?

It feels like there’s a net cast over his body, trapping him on all sides, the thread cutting into his skin. He’s got to get out, but how? He can’t swim away. Any thrashing about just tightens the lines. It’s hopeless.

He’s so deep in thought, he doesn’t notice the MT at his side until it lays a hand on his arm. Prompto jumps and tries to pull away, but its grip is iron. All he succeeds in doing is tearing his shirt sleeve.

“Hey, buddy,” Prompto says, thinking _there’s a copy of my face behind that mask._ “You need something…?”

The MT opens its mouth. Without moving its lips or tongue, it speaks in a scratchy, pre-recorded voice. _“Chief Besithia commands your presence.”_

Prompto smiles shakily. “Didn’t know you could talk.”

_“Chief Besithia commands your presence,”_ it says again, and starts dragging Prompto down the hallway.

“No,” Prompto whispers. “No! I don’t care if he _commands my presence,_ I don’t want to see him. Let me go!” He grabs at the MT’s hand, tries to pry its fingers off his arm. It squeezes tighter. Prompto can feel his bone start to crack under the pressure. “I said let go! You were human once, right? Aren’t we like brothers? Hey, I’m talking to you!”

The MT turns its head around, its metal face expressionless. Prompto grabs at the plates, scratching at them. “Dude, please, I’m sorry I killed the others, just—”

The MT twists his arm painfully. Prompto lets out a sharp cry. He grits his teeth, glaring at the MT as it claws his wristband off.

_“Unit 05953234 identified. Subduing compromised unit.”_

Its fist collides with the back of Prompto’s head. He only has a moment to feel the pain before he collapses into darkness.

\---

He wakes up to the sound of metal clinking.

There’s thick rope binding his hands together, and more tying his feet to the legs of a chair. Prompto ignores the pain in his head in favor of trying to escape. He flexes his hands, tugs at the ropes, but they hold tight. Any attempts to rock the chair are met with failure; it must be nailed to the floor. It takes him a moment to realize the room itself isn’t dark—there’s a blindfold wrapped around his head. He closes his mouth and quiets his breathing, listening, trying to figure out where he is, and who’s here with him. There’s metal clinking again, off to his left, while another person—maybe several—shuffle around to his right. Someone murmurs quietly. Prompto recognizes the voice as Ravus’s.

“Ah, awake, are you?”

He can’t help but flinch at the sound of Verstael’s voice. A hand cups his chin. Prompto jerks his head away, grimacing.

“Not too fond of you anymore, is he?” Ardyn says, disembodied, somewhere in front of him.

“It matters not. His cooperation is hardly important, nor is his fondness.”

“Oh? And what of your precious experiment?”

“The data we’ve obtained on that is disappointing at best. He’s done scarcely any real investigation, has avoided killing any humans… It’s been quite exhausting, waiting for him to do something useful. I’d rather focus on other avenues of research for now.”

“Chief?” Ravus says. He’s the only one who sounds hesitant. Prompto turns his head in his direction. “I’m not certain I need to be present for this.”

“You came here to observe our experiments, did you not?”

“Yes, and the presentation your comrades gave me on the prototype shock troopers was more than impressive. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to—”

“Nervous, are we?” Ardyn says mockingly. “Is the great Prince of Tenebrae too squeamish for such things?”

Ravus doesn’t answer.

“Good. Now,” Verstael says, and the hand is back on Prompto’s chin, insistent, “we have work to do.”

There’s more shuffling, the sound of someone shifting back and forth on their feet. Prompto breathes in slowly through his nose. He's done being caught off guard by Verstael. He knows what kind of person his 'father' is. Whatever he has planned, Prompto isn't going to go along with it quietly.

When Verstael's hand moves away from his chin, Prompto jerks forward and catches it in a vicious bite. Verstael yelps. Prompto grinds his teeth as hard as he can, feeling blood fill his mouth. Verstael yanks his hand back, but Prompto only bites harder, and before he knows it the finger bones beneath his teeth are breaking.

At that, Verstael only gasps. A boot drives hard into Prompto's bare foot, breaking a few toes, and when Prompto opens his mouth in shock Verstael yanks his hand away.

Ardyn is laughing. Prompto realizes this slowly as the white hot pain fades to an insistent thrum, rising and falling as his heart beats. "He certainly is a fighter, isn't he, Verstael? Where do you reckon he gets it from?"

"Little _brat,_ " Verstael hisses. "You'll regret this."

"Doubt it, you bastard," Prompto snaps. The blood is still coppery in his mouth, painting his gums and teeth. A few drops run down his chin, but Prompto can't wipe them away and he sure as hell isn't going to lick them up.

"We shall see," Verstael spits. In the absence of sight, Prompto can't help but think that he's turned into a daemon; with his raspy, angry voice, he certainly sounds like one. "We'll start immediately. Ardyn, begin the recording."

"Already have," Ardyn chuckles.

Verstael scoffs. "Of course you have. Do something useful and take care of these, then."

Prompto doesn't know what happens next. He listens closely, but Ardyn's words are near illegible. A cold rush of air sweeps over the room. A moment later, Verstael sighs, and his voice is no longer laced with pain. "Ready, Deputy High Commander?"

"Chief Besithia, Chancellor Izunia, I formerly protest this obvious violation of human rights," Ravus says. At the same moment Prompto thinks _wait, Niflheim recognizes human rights?_ Verstael says "this thing is a clone, not a human."

Prompto squeezes his eyes shut against the blindfold, a horrible feeling spreading through his chest, and silently thanks Ravus for trying.

The cold press of a knife against his neck has Prompto squirming instinctively against his seat. The knife drags over his skin until it reaches the collar of his shirt, leaving stinging cuts in its wake. Thin trails of blood roll down to stain the fabric.

Prompto expects Verstael to cut deeper, and that’s what he prepares for, steeling himself for the pain the same way he does in Crownsguard training. When the blade catches on his shirt, his blood runs cold. "Wait," he says, "what are you doing?"

Verstael doesn't answer. He rips the knife down, slashing through his shirt until it's hanging in tatters across his body. He does the same for the sleeves, and ignores Prompto's shouts in favor of ripping the whole thing off. Prompto grimaces, knowing the stretch marks crossing his belly are on full display.

"Don't tell me you were _fat?_ " Verstael says in disgust.

Someone giggles in a far corner of the room. It’s feminine, and with a start, Prompto realizes there are lab techs coming in and out of the room in the room; there’s a faint whoosh of a door opening, and soft footsteps. The clink of glassware being moved around. His stomach drops. He glares behind the blindfold, hoping Verstael can sense it somehow.

"I suppose it makes sense. You seem like the type; overindulgent, lazy…"

"Shut up," Prompto whispers.

Verstael brings the knife to the top of his pants, using it to pull the waistband away from his abdomen. "Such a worthless disgrace."

Prompto does his best to struggle while Verstael cuts his pants and boxers away, but his movements only make the knife slip and cut his skin. By the time Verstael is done, Prompto is covered in tiny, painful gashes, and fully nude. The cold air of the lab, pushing down from somewhere above him, makes him shiver.

Verstael makes a considering hum. "Increase the AC."

There's a click, and the cold air gushing at him intensifies. Prompto grits his teeth to keep them from chattering. He can't stop his skin from flushing red all the way down his neck, the blush a hot and unpleasant contrast to the cold air.

"How cute!" Ardyn remarks. "He blushes like you, Vers."

"Silence, fool," Verstael mutters. "Now, where to begin… ah, yes. This seems interesting."

"Chief Besithia," Ravus says, imploringly, but he's silenced by a short _tsk_ from Verstael.

"If we don't subject him to pain, we won't gain any useful data," he says. "This method is rather kind compared to others. It only has a _chance_ of damaging him permanently."

Prompto is so focused on trying _not_ to think about the fact that he's totally naked in front of Verstael, Ardyn, and Ravus—who he recently _offered_ himself to, gods—that he almost doesn't notice the change. It's an alteration in the air near his hand, hovering next to his left pinky finger. Prompto manages to focus on it instead of the pain lacing his abdomen and legs, but quickly wishes he hadn't.

Something burning hot and metal jams under his nail. Prompto shouts, tries to pull his hand away, but quickly stops when the pliers clamp tight around his nail. Then he's pushing forward, his whole body trembling, as Verstael slowly tugs at his nail. His nerves scream, the smell of burning flesh rises, and blood leaks out around the metal. Before Prompto can understand what's happening, his nail rips free, and with it comes a guttural scream.

It burns like a wildfire, starting in his hand and lacing up his nerves, through his arm and straight to his brain. Prompto's entire body seizes up before slumping over, his breaths coming out as ragged gasps. His pinky shakes, the now exposed nail bed bleeding and so, so hot. He bites down a sob before it can escape his throat.

"What a disappointing performance," Verstael says. "I'd expected a more stoic reaction."

Prompto coughs, spits up the saliva gathered in his mouth from the screaming, and shouts _"how the hell could_ anyone _be stoic during that, asshole?!"_

Ardyn chuckles again. Ravus shuffles around. Verstael snickers. "Perhaps there is some hope. That's a more coherent reaction than most humans would give. Onto the next one, then."

Prompto struggles to take in air. He jerks back again, and gets nowhere. "Don't you fucking dare!"

"Come now. We have nine to go." The pliers, burning white hot and stinging violently against his skin, are forced under the nail on his ring finger. "Don't be such an infant."

By the third nail, Prompto is screaming continuously, choking on spit. By the fifth, he's sobbing. By the sixth, he's nearly passed out from the agony, each fingertip nothing but nerve endings and tortured skin. Verstael slams a fist down on his violently shaking hand, and he lets out another scream.

He thinks he hears Ravus say "dear gods," but it's background noise against the torture.

He begins begging for mercy by the time Verstael is on number seven, although he should know by now that there is no mercy in his father's heart. When the final nail is torn out, number ten, Prompto can't even register that the torment is over, can't understand it; all he feels is pain, violent and unending, throbbing over his fingers. The blood gushing out of them, sliding down the chair's arms and splattering against his legs as he thrashes, is only a secondary concern. He sobs again, tears catching in the fabric over his eyes, making it wet and cold.

"And to think I had such hope," Verstael mutters. "If you had an MT's resistance to pain, then perhaps your type would be proven useful for spywork despite your personal lack of creativity. And yet… ah, well. Not all lines of inquiry can bear fruit, after all.”

"I'll kill you," Prompto mutters, delirious. "All of you. I'll fucking… _kill_ …"

"It would be most interesting to see you try," Ardyn muses.

There are more sounds, shuffling, and then Ravus is talking, his voice clear through the agonizing thrum that comes with every beat of Prompto's heart. "Chief Besithia, sir, now that you've proven he has an average person's pain tolerance, should we not end the experiment? You would only dirty your lab with more blood."

"Do not worry yourself, Deputy High Commander," Verstael says. There's a sharp sound of metal on metal—the pliers being put away, Prompto hopes, he wants those damn things far, far away from him—but then there's scraping, and Verstael is coming closer again. Prompto starts to tremble even harder. “This method won't draw any blood.”

The first thing Prompto feels is nothing, his muscles seizing up, and for a blessed moment he's free of pain. Then he comes crashing back into his body, and there's electricity running lines up and down from two pinch points on his chest, singing through to his bloody, fleshy nail beds.

Five seconds and the shock is gone, replaced with exhaustion. Prompto works his throat, trying to keep himself from vomiting up stomach acid. He wants to go home. He wants to die. He wants _Noct._

"Oh, I like that. Let's try it again," Verstael says, and Prompto stops thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poor prompto i am sorry i do this to you :')  
> as a side note, sorry for how late this chapter is. a positive update, however, is that i am now finished with the rough draft! hopefully the coming chapters will be updated in a more timely manner :)


	8. Animus

He doesn't exactly wake up, because he never really fell asleep. He didn't even get to pass out; his fingers scream too insistently, and although the shocks from the taser have long since faded, he can feel the burns they left all over his chest. His heart is beating too fast. Prompto desperately tries to breathe slowly, to calm down, but then the pain in his hands intensifies and he has to bite back tears again.

He's been drifting between reality and dreams—between the freezing lab and the green film of unwanted childhood memories—for so long that at first he thinks the voices around him are from the realm of fantasy. When it becomes clear they're not, that the two men arguing above him are real, Prompto groans and makes an effort to listen in.

"See?" a voice, familiar and awful, says. "He's waking up already. He's fine; we can continue."

"Chief Besithia," another voice says, sounding as desperate as Prompto feels, "if you do this, it’s highly unlikely he will recover. What use is he to you so damaged?"

"A good point," the awful voice says. There's a prick of pain against the skin of his wrist, just below the barcode. He recognizes the knife from before. Prompto would whimper if he had the strength. "If I go about degloving him, he'll be even more pathetic than he is currently."

"I second the Deputy High Commander's recommendation of a recess," a third man says. Prompto struggles to open his eyes, but even with the blindfold on, the light is too blinding. He flinches away. "It'll be good for us all to stretch our legs."

"I am not calling for a recess, I am calling for an end to this madness," Ravus says, _Ravus,_ and though Prompto was thankful earlier when the man stood up for him, he's furious now that his 'help' came so late. He growls, low and animal-like, and mutters something incomprehensible even to his own ears. He thinks the men look his way, for a moment, but then Ravus continues. "Let him rest, Verstael."

His father is here? Prompto mutters again, louder this time, and stretches forward. He needs to be held and coddled and told it's okay. He wants to be told that he's not worthless. There's a voice in the back of his mind screaming at him that Verstael can't give him those things, that he would _never,_ but Prompto doesn't understand. He's his father, why wouldn't he—

_the poisoned wine the isolation the strike to his face the constant dehumanization, the casual declaration of Prompto as his property, the cruelty of Niflheim's most honored_ mad scientist—

Prompto vomits bile onto his lap.

Verstael pays him no mind. He must have been talking the entire time Prompto was falling apart, but he only catches the tail end of it: "—let you take him, if you're truly that attached."

"Of course I'm not attached," Ravus says, and Prompto can hear the palpable discomfort in his voice when he continues with, "he's just an object."

Prompto hiccups, painfully aware of the tear tracks down his cheeks.

"An object indeed."

When his bindings is cut, Prompto becomes acutely aware of the rope burns on his wrists and ankles. He's bleeding from where the scratchy rope tore into him, and the stiffness in his muscles is overwhelming. He wants to stretch, but any movement makes his nail beds rush against more cold air; Prompto wishes he could just lie down and curl up in a ball, and maybe never open his eyes again.

A door opens and then slams shut, impossibly loud like thunder during Insomnia’s rainy season. Two sets of footsteps come closer, one of them heavy and awkward. Inhuman. "No," Prompto gasps. "Don't…"

The tie on his blindfold comes loose, but Prompto can't open his eyes without the light hurting.

"Pick him up," Ravus orders.

"Don't fucking touch me," Prompto says. The MT's arms encircle him, move him into a bridal hold, and Prompto thrashes uselessly. "Let go!"

"It's alright, it's over," Ravus soothes, and Prompto screams in anger, because if it's over then _why does it still hurt so much?_

He doesn't know how long they walk. Eventually he's set down onto a cold tile floor, and he raises his hands to his chest, trying to shield them from… he doesn’t know what. More torment, maybe. There's the sound of running water and something wet and warm with the texture of a cat’s tongue washing his legs. A low hum, a tune Prompto has never heard, fills the room. It takes a few heartbeats for him to realize he's being cleaned.

The rag occasionally grows cold, then leaves and comes back wet and hot again, wiping the vomit away from his thighs and groin. A softer cloth comes and cleans the still-open cuts on his chest and hips; it’s soaked in a stinging solution that has Prompto scrambling to get away.

He forces his eyes open, blinking back tears, and sees Ravus kneeling in front of him. His gloves are gone and his sleeves are pulled back. They're in the public bathroom in the residential section, close to his and Verstael’s rooms.

Prompto rears back. "You watched."

"Let me finish cleaning you," Ravus says.

"You watched. You watched him torture me and did _nothing,_ " Prompto hisses. He can't tell if the crushing weight on his chest is anger or sadness. "You _let_ him!"

"If you don't allow me to clean your fingers, your nails may not grow back," Ravus says gently.

Prompto sniffles, and presents his bloody hands.

It's agony. Each gentle touch of the rag, each drop of disinfectant feels like a torture all its own, his raw and inflamed skin pulsing. Prompto sobs and screams, begs for it to stop, and finally Ravus is wrapping his fingers in bandages, and Prompto can't tell if the constant but secure pressure over his nail beds is worse than the plain, cold air.

"I'm sorry," he gasps out. "I didn't mean it. It wasn't your fault."

"Think nothing of it. You were right. I watched, and did nothing."

"You tried," Prompto says. "This is my fault. All of it. All this happened because I was stupid. I should never have expected anyone to help me. I mean, who would want to waste their time with a nobody like me?"

His voice sounds slurred to his own ears, so he's surprised when Ravus seems to understand, his frown deepening. "Prompto, that is not true."

"It's my fault for trusting him," Prompto gasps. "I wanted a dad so badly, I just wanted _someone_ to love me unconditionally. Someone who wouldn't leave me if they found out the truth." He closes his eyes, sees Noctis, Ignis, Gladio. Cor. His Majesty. "Someone who wouldn't leave when they realized how unworthy I am. Fuck, I wanna go _home._ "

"You will," Ravus shushes. "Come now, you need rest."

Prompto doubts he'll be able to sleep. He hobbles down the hall after Ravus, determined to make it on his own two feet, but they don't stop at his room. They keep going further down the hall, far past Verstael’s room, until Ravus produces a key card from his coat and unlocks a bedroom Prompto has never been in before. It's much larger than his own room, with a slightly bigger bed and a wide, empty closet. There's a small white suitcase in the corner. "You'll stay with me for the time being," Ravus says, leaving Prompto no choice in the matter.

He doesn’t bother answering. He brushes his hands against the bed, and the feather soft pressure feels like he’s dunked his fingers in molten lava. The floor beneath his feet and the bedspread on his fingertips feel far away. It's like he's floating out of his body, and although the experience is scary, it's also comforting. Now he can't feel the pain as much. Prompto embraces it.

Ravus removes his coat and sets it on the desk, then rummages through his suitcase. He produces a shirt and sweatpants, grey and several sizes too large.

"Here," he says, and though it's stupid Prompto can't help but hurry to cover himself at the reminder of his nudity.

He dresses, still feeling weak and disoriented, and practically collapses on the bed, crushing his hands. Ravus rearranges him so he’s lying on his back and frowns at the blood staining his bandages red. Prompto blinks and suddenly Ravus is at the now-open door, holding a bottle of pills. There’s a voice in the hall. The door slides shut. Prompto's brows furrow. He tries to remember someone coming in, but can't. Maybe he's losing time. He's so tired.

"Swallow these,” Ravus says, and hands him two pills. There's a glass of water at his lips, too, and Ravus is propping him up, helping him drink. "I'd prefer to give you morphine, but Besithia wouldn't allow it."

Prompto flinches at the name.

Ravus sighs and lays him down. "Listen and listen well, MT." He snaps his fingers in front of Prompto's face, startling his eyes open. He hadn’t noticed them closing. "You will survive this. You will return home to your country and loved ones. This, I know."

The thought seems an impossible pipe dream. Prompto can’t even remember what home looks like. "Liar," he accuses weakly, and passes out for good.

\---

Weeks pass. Ravus changes the bandages and washes his nails regularly, and Prompto takes the time to stare at the bloody, angry nubs. After the first week, which he spent in utter agony in Ravus's room, it had started to dull. Now it’s a constant but familiar throbbing that makes it impossible to put pressure on his fingertips. Holding things in his palms becomes possible, but anything that requires his fingers—typing, pulling a trigger, even opening a door that has a handle—is impossible. It makes his vision white out as he doubles over, muscles locking with pain. He wakes up from nightmares often, now, and they aren’t the vaguely scary but easy to forget memories of his early childhood; now they’re horrible, nasty recreations of the incident, ones where Ravus doesn’t stop Verstael, and the man keeps going and going until Prompto is a bloody mess of nerve endings curled up on the floor.

Ravus is remarkably patient through all of it. He cleans up Prompto’s vomit, blood, and the clear, slightly nasty fluid that drains out of his nail beds, follows him around and helps him with things, and generally keeps him away from Verstael and Ardyn, not that either of them have tried to approach Prompto. They’ve seemingly lost interest in their broken toy. Perhaps that’s what Verstael meant by Prompto being “disappointing”; he’s no good at detective work and can’t withstand torture, so he’s useless, not even worth spitting on.

Prompto, for his part, bounces back and forth like a pendulum. He’s alternatively pissed beyond belief at Ravus for not doing more, and worn down to tears of gratitude for the kindness he’s being given. His anger at Verstael, constantly twinged with sadness, is a constant presence. Ardyn, too. He wishes he could use his gun, so he could kill the both of them.

When he imagines doing it, though, some voice tells him _this isn’t you, what happened to the old Prompto, the one who gets sad when chocobos die in movies? The one who likes taking pictures of the sunset? What happened to that bright, happy goofball?_

The truth is, Prompto’s not sure he ever existed in the first place. Everything in the past feels so far away, he can’t remember if that was ever really him, or if he just faked it to get Noctis to like him. Maybe this angry mess of a person is the real him, exposed by Verstael’s torture. Maybe he’s always been like this.

Ravus takes him quietly to the medical center about two weeks after the fact, and the nurse tells him there isn’t anything they can do for the injury itself. His nail beds aren’t damaged, so his nails will grow back eventually. It’ll just probably take half a year.

Half a year of not being able to use his hands without unbearable pain. Great.

He forces himself to hold his gun anyway. He can’t let himself be caught off guard again. He practices taking the handgun, aiming it, pressing down on the trigger. The pressure is excruciating. He starts double wrapping his fingertips. The more cushioned they are, the less they tend to hurt when he touches anything.

There are several nights when Ravus has to talk him down from hunting Verstael and Ardyn and putting bullets in their brains, and even more when he catches sight of the fading burn marks on his stomach and chest and is thrown full force into panic attacks as Ravus tries to calm him down. He’s remarkably bad at comfort, becoming easily panicked himself. Prompto learns to deal with it on his own.

And, of course, there’s the assassin business.

Prompto has no idea why on this godsdamned earth Verstael would injure him so severely with _that_ going on. He can’t handle picking through files or typing on a computer. He’s too volatile, too moody to talk to anyone. He can’t force himself to act the fool. He’s always on edge. There’s no way he can do any investigating right now. Not that it seems to matter; Verstael seems to think the answer was obvious from the start, right in front of him. It’s become clear, now, that this was all just a plan to mess with him, to test him. Why else would they bother?

He says as much to Ravus one night, after bombs go off in several residential rooms, including the one he was staying in before he moved in with Ravus. He’s in near hysterics at the thought of more bodies piling up, more blood to be washed off the tile, when Ravus says “why are you so concerned with their deaths?”

“Some of us actually care about other people’s lives, Mister Deputy High Commander,” Prompto says viciously, and Ravus glowers and ignores him. He apologizes later in a fit of tears and is gruffly forgiven, although Ravus seems to understand, at least, where the sentiment came from.

Life continues like this for weeks. Prompto’s nail beds ache as his new nails grow over them, and he keeps the fleshy parts wrapped in bandages. The burns on his chest fade into scars. Ravus becomes more distant the less Prompto needs his help to keep from going off the deep end. Prompto sniffles about it one night in the public bathroom. He doesn’t know if he likes Ravus or not, can’t make up his mind. He feels pathetic and small.

He forces himself to do something about it exactly three months after the fact. He submits a motion with the receptionist, the one he shot in the head—she doesn’t even realize it was him, and he shoves the overwhelming guilt down deep inside of him—and moves his meager belongings into another room. Ravus doesn’t protest. Prompto spends the whole night awake, and then the next. And the next. And the next, until he passes out from exhaustion and has fevered dreams about his body on fire. The ‘assassin’ kills another random person right outside his door that night, and leaves the body for him to find in the morning.

It’s the security guard who’d slapped his ass and called him an ‘it.’

That’s the final straw on the chocobo’s back; that’s what makes him decide this is the end. He’s going home. Maybe he’ll shoot Verstael on his way out, he’s undecided. But he’s getting out of here.

When he tries to remember what he thought was so precious back home, so important that he desired it above all else, the thought dissipates like smoke.

_(Noctis. You’re going to survive this for Noctis, so you can tell him you’re sorry.)_

He submits a motion to get another room, right near the end of the sprawling residential section. Anyone who’s at the facility, guest or employee, stays there. He can keep track of anyone coming or going this way. It’s not the best plan, but it’s the best he has.

That night he leaves his boots on when he slips into bed, sets his gun on the mattress next to his pillow, and waits.

\---

There’s a sound.

It’s been days of waiting, countless hours spent listening for any unusual noises, but now there’s a sound. Light footsteps, almost like the person walking is trying to stay undetected. It’s been five nights since Prompto has stopped sleeping strictly for this purpose. He almost thinks the footsteps are a hallucination, before they come again, right outside his room. A shadow passes under the door.

Prompto is on his feet in a second. His fingers throb as he picks up his gun, but the puffy layers of bandages soften the pressure. He peers through the crack between the door and floor. The person has moved on, but Prompto can catch sight of their boots as they walk down the hall. They’re pale brown, the kind he’s seen many researchers here wear. They keep pattering down the hall, quiet and confident.

Prompto eases into the hallway once they step through the door that separates the residential section from the rest of the facility. He creeps along the hall, trying not to let the ever-present bright lights disorient him. He’s running on far too little sleep, his stomach is in knots from having only had a cup of oatmeal that morning, and his vision keeps spotting black. He has to do this, though. Catch this killer, be it Verstael or an MT or whoever, then go home. Eat Galahdian street food. Maybe sleep for ten years.

_(See Noctis again.)_

The footsteps are only slightly audible once he gets out of the residential sector. He can see the hint of a shadow passing around the corner up ahead. Prompto slinks along the wall, following at a distance, as his mark weaves through the facility. The hum of the heating system almost completely masks their footsteps. Prompto nearly loses track of them several times, as they round a corner a little too quickly, or seem to teleport from one end of a hallway to another. Their movements are just slightly too fast and precise to be that of a person, but they're not clunky and loud like an MT's. He can't make sense of it. Not human, not MT. A spark of an image appears in his mind, the picture of the half machine, half yeti creature in the papers he stole, but whatever this is it’s too small to be a monster like that.

The thing speeds up, taking entire hallways in one leap. Prompto can't catch sight of it, only its shadow and the vague impression of something moving up ahead. He gasps for air as he breaks into a run.

His head pounds. He can feel another migraine coming on, but between that and the pain in his fingers it feels like everything is cancelling out to zero. The bright lights, the cold air, the thud of his own heart in his ears; it’s all so much, it circles back around to being nothing. Prompto focuses on the shadow he’s chasing, tearing through labs, past weapons vaults and desks with empty coffee mugs and the occasional MT patrol. He only barely notices that something is wrong with them; the MTs are twitching in a way he’s never seen before, their joints groaning with movement. One of them actually staggers after him as he runs past. It’s the most they’ve ever been interested in him, save the one who grabbed him and dragged him off to Besithia. He wonders if this one is trying to do the same thing now.

He turns the corner and ends up in a familiar room. Flood lights rise high above him. There’s a door on the far wall. It should be locked, but it isn’t; it’s hanging open, revealed a long, black hallway behind it. His mark is no where to be seen. Prompto makes for the door, racing with all his might. The gun remains in his hand, pointed down. The door slides shut as he passes it, the lock clicking in the darkness.

There isn’t even a shred of light. The shadows seem to collapse inward around him. The sounds of his own breath, his boots beating against the floor, are all magnified. Vaguely, Prompto realizes the hallway is slanted down, and he's heading under the facility. A basement, maybe? Whatever it is, his mark is down there, so Prompto is going to keep moving forward.

He starts to hear movement just up ahead. Prompto slows to a dash, trying to listen in. There's scratching, hissing, clicks that sound like beaks snapping together and claws tapping against metal. A soft groan slinks down the hallway, carried on the stale air. It sounds almost human, deep and pained, and Prompto chases after it.

He crashes into a door and practically rips it off its hinges. Beyond the doorway is a massive room, the sounds of chains and claws echoing through it in such a cacophony he can’t tell where it’s all coming from. He should have brought his phone, near-dead as it is, if only to use it as a flashlight.

Prompto inches forward. Somehow, all the room’s energy seems to be directed at him. As if a switch has been flicked on, thousands of beedly, reflective eyes turn to face him. Some blink in and out of existence as they move horizontally—passing behind the bars of a cage, perhaps. The door clicks shut behind him.

“No daemons in the facility, my ass,” Prompto mutters.

He doesn’t expect anyone to answer him, and yet a familiar if distorted voice chides, “so impulsive. Surrounded by monsters on all sides. Whatever shall you do now?”

The groan comes again, and as his eyes get more used to the darkness Prompto can make out a shape in the far corner of the room; massive, bulky, shuffling around in a too-small cage. It snuffs, a loud noise, and Prompto walks toward the creature, his gun hanging limply in his hand. As he passes other cages, other chained things, they snap and growl at him. There’s a plaque in front of the cage with the massive shadow inside, reading _Unit SAS-0822._ This thing has a number, like him. It was living once, too, just as he was.

This creature deserves its freedom. Prompto finds the lock on the cage, huge and old-fashioned, and presses the muzzle of his gun against it. Then he backs up, keeping his aim true, and fires. The lock shoots off in an explosion of noise and sparks. The beast within roars.

“Hey,” Prompto says to Barbarus, the ugly crown jewel of Verstael’s experiments.

The yeti scurries out of the cage on metal legs. The beasts around them howl and hiss, fearful and angry at this colossal thing getting too close to their cages. Barbarus draws up, its form slightly reflective now that the metal is visible beneath the fur, and Prompto sways on his feet. The yeti doesn’t move to attack, just grunts and sniffs.

“Well, that’s boring,” Ardyn drawls again. “I suppose that’s what we get for not fully infecting it with the Scourge. No matter.” He snaps his fingers, and hundreds of clicks sound around the room, followed by a cacophony of claws raking against the floor, wings beating against the air, and teeth gnashing.

“You should get out of here,” Prompto says. He doesn’t know if Barbarus understands, but it heeds his warning anyway, jumping on top of its cage and retreating high into the rafters. Prompto catches sight of it hanging there, its heavy body held up by strong, wide arms, looking almost funny in contrast with its thin legs.

He’s about to laugh when a little body barrels into him, its teeth ripping into the flesh of his right arm.

“A snaga,” Ardyn says. “Not the brightest or strongest of daemons, but they tend to hunt in swarms. Quite convenient for getting rid of pesky little things like you. They scarcely leave anything behind.”

Prompto shoots the creature and each of its friends that appear, their laughter and beady eyes easily giving away their positions. “Is that all you got?” he shouts, exhausted by his own anger. He’s been angry for so long, fury boiling in his blood, and he’d just like to feel something else for a change.

“Not at all.” He can hear the smirk in Ardyn’s voice. “There’s plenty of companions here for you to play with.”

There's a sound, like jelly being dropped on the floor, and a rush of movement to his left. Prompto dodges, his head pounding again, as a flan charges past him. He rears back after a hobgoblin slashes at his front. In the distance, he can see a galvanade and cryonade alight.

He can't win this fight. Even half delirious, he knows he can't win. He has to run, has to get out of this death trap, has to get back up to the facility and track down his mark—that's what's important.

His eyes widen. The assassin.

_"You!"_ he shouts at Ardyn, accompanying the accusation with a series of shots. The voice chuckles and dissipates, coming back into being directly behind him.

"Oh, my dear boy," Ardyn says, the rumble in his voice sending a shiver up Prompto's spine. "If only you hadn't befriended the Chosen King, I might have liked you."

"You bastard!" Prompto shoots again. He hears a satisfying thud, an _oof_ , and keeps firing. Every single bullet hits its mark. "What the fuck was the point of all this? Why did you send me on some crazy goosechase, trying to catch a murderer who doesn't exist? Where do you get off on all this?!"

"The reason why is quite simple. I wanted to torment the Chosen's closest companion, and Verstael wanted to kill time with an experiment." Claws gouge at Prompto's arms, while teeth bite at his ankles. He’s forced to stop shooting at Ardyn and face the horde of daemons, all angry and hungry for blood. "And I quite disagree with your assessment of the situation. There _is_ a murderer here—several, in fact. And you're one of them."

Prompto ignores the way his heart sinks into his gut, and shoots until he runs out of bullets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, writing the scenes with prompto and ravus: oh my god they were roommates
> 
> a short chapter, but we're almost at the finish line!


	9. Never Coming Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new tag for this chapter - cannibalism ;)

There's blood slicking the floor, viscous and sticky, and even more splattered on his clothes and arms. His nail beds ache; he can hardly breathe. He doesn't have time to stop and rest, though. Without bullets, he has no chance of survival. He has to get to a weapons vault. He has to push on.

He has to _kill._

He attacks the remaining daemons with his bare hands and teeth, biting blunt wounds into their arms and gouging their eyes with his thumbs. He’s at a natural disadvantage, though, and that becomes clearer the longer he fights. He’s slower, his flesh softer, and his body doesn’t react as calmly to pain. Every second he wastes, he’s getting slower, his wounds getting deeper. His breath fading.

An angry cry takes hold of the room. It’s several moments before Prompto realizes it’s his own voice.

A floating death snatches his leg with its jaws, yanking him to the ground. He’s just thrown his arms over his face to keep it from disfiguring him when there’s a crash. The entire room shakes violently. The daemons shriek and squeal. The room reverberates with a booming howl, and Prompto raises his head to see Barbarus leaping down from the ceiling, beating its fists against the floor. Smashing up the daemons in a violent frenzy.

Like an lightning strike, he realizes how stupid this all is. There was never a chance of Verstael and Ardyn letting him go, no matter what he did. There’s no point in killing these daemons. He has to run, _now._

Prompto scrambles to his feet and charges in the direction he thinks the door is. Ardyn’s laughter echoes through the room. He forces himself to ignore it. A daemon collapses in front of him; he leaps over its mangled corpse. Death cries fill the air. Everything smells like rotting. He catches Barbarus’s eye on his way out, and the yeti snarls in a way Prompto thinks might be friendly before it turns and launches itself back at the ceiling. There’s a burst of sound as part of the building collapses, bits of the night sky peaking out through the rubble. The opening fails to bring in any light—it must be a new moon. At home, Prompto would keep track of things like that, so he knew which nights were the best to take photos on.

At _home._

He runs back through the hallway. Some of the daemons which survived Barbarus’s assault come after him, but that isn’t what’s concerning Prompto. The thing that worries him, the thing that he keeps thinking about, is the way the floor under his boots feels just slightly hot. The air is hotter, too, almost steaming, and Prompto wipes sweat off of his forehead. This can’t be the result of the night air; it’s well below freezing outside. Whatever’s making that heat, Prompto doesn’t want to meet it.

He tears through the hall, slamming his shoulder against the door and forcing it open. His entire body throbs with pain as he crashes onto the floor. There’s no time to stop, though; he can hear the damn things coming after him still, hungry for the blood trailing out of the wounds all over his body. Prompto looks around hurriedly, trying to find something to help—a weapons vault, a person, anything.

His eyes wander up. The floodlights.

Each of them has thick cables running across the floor to a large box on the wall. Prompto runs up to it, checking for any kind of switch. He finds one. His hands grip it, trembling slightly, and he waits for the daemons to come spilling out into the room.

The moment they enter, angry, black masses of shadow and sticky ichor, Prompto pulls the switch. The floodlights flicker on, blindingly bright, and the daemons cackle and howl in pain. Prompto almost feels sorry for the way they writhe and whine on the floor, but he doesn’t have the time. The snowmobile is still in the garage. Screw the guards; he’s getting to it, one way or another.

Faintly, as the pounding in his head rises and falls like tidal waves, he realizes there’s an alarm going off. When he steps back into the facility proper, there are people everywhere; scientists in sleep clothes, confused but swiftly gathering papers and computers and specimens, guards guiding everyone towards evacuation zones. The MTs are standing at attention as usual, but they’re even more twitchy than before; red electricity crackles around them, and their heads shake, as if saying _no, no, no._

One of them hoists its gun and fires on the crowd. Prompto ignores the screams and runs.

Around another corner, he comes face to face with several daemons. Bits of their skin has been burned away from the UV lights, but they seem unbothered by the fluorescents. Prompto jumps over a mindflayer that has someone crushed between its tentacles. Their hand twitches as it lies on the floor, as if the headless corpse can sense Prompto’s presence and is asking for help.

Too bad. If he couldn’t beg for help, neither can these people. He’s done. There’s something that wants him to go back, though. It doesn’t matter that he still doesn’t have bullets; he wants to go back and tear the mindflayer’s limbs off, bite into its gooey flesh. Feed on its entrails.

The lights spin as he keeps moving. The facility is in total chaos now, evacuation routes blocked off by daemons. Barbarus is howling somewhere far away, its voice powerful enough to send reverberations through the building. The MTs aren’t helping, now openly shaking and flinging their weapons around haphazardly. Prompto has no idea what’s going on. It frightens him. He can’t _think._

The air is so, so hot.

There’s a hand on his arm, gripping tight, and he lashes out with a snarl. His fingers scream as he instinctively tries to claw at whatever’s holding him. Ravus stands there, shocked, his white hair askew.

“Prompto?” he says warily, tightening his hold.

Prompto coughs. “Ravus. What’s happening?”

“I’d like to ask you that. Who set the daemons free?” He pauses to cut an uttu in half with his sword as she charges him, her body splitting at the waist into human and spider parts. “Was it you?”

“No, it was—agh!” Prompto doubles over, struggling to breathe as his lungs seize. His vision spots again, but this time it’s red, red, red. “It was Ardyn.”

Ravus’s hand leaves his arm in favor of cupping his face. Prompto’s eyes are sealed shut with some kind of thick liquid that feels more like motor oil than tears. Ravus mutters something, jams a thumb between the lids of his left eye and pries them apart.

“You’re Scourge-infected?” he says, expression strained.

Prompto can’t answer. He coughs again, and black blood spills out over his tongue.

Ravus’s breath stutters. “I suppose it makes sense, as you were to be a MT. You were probably infected as an infant.” He shoves Prompto aside as an MT charges between them, axe gleaming. “We need to go. I am the blood of the Oracle; I can heal you, but I need peace and quiet. Come with me.”

“No,” Prompto says. “Gotta go, gotta _run_ —”

“You can run once you’re cured,” Ravus says, and tries to pull him away. There should be no way for a guy of Prompto’s stature to resist his strength, but when he digs his feet into the ground and stands firm, Ravus can’t yank him away.

It must be good luck; moments later, Prompto hears a voice in the distance. It’s too far away to understand the words, but he’d recognize that tone anywhere. His blood boils.

Ravus stares at him incredulously when he rips his arm away. Prompto just growls _“Verstael,”_ and bolts.

He runs through the halls, leaping over rubble and bodies and dodging daemons and MTs. Under the rush of blood in his ears and the cries of daemons, Prompto can hear Ravus calling after him. All he can focus on, though, is Verstael; dressed in that stupid red armor of his, calmly expediting the removal of computers and tablets and files. Completely oblivious, or uncaring, to the violence around him. Prompto pounces, slams him into the ground with a fury, ignoring the frightened people darting about.

“Son, is this your doing?” Verstael asks plainly, still unconcerned. “If so, you’ve made quite a mess of things. I don’t know whether to be annoyed, or impressed.”

Prompto bares his teeth.

“Nothing to say? Perhaps you _are_ just a machine.” Verstael hums appraisingly. “I never believed you were less than human, you know. It’s clear you have at least some capacity for sentient thought. It would be foolish of a researcher to ignore such a thing simply because it _seems_ impossible.”

“Shut up,” Prompto says.

Verstael smirks. “I only wanted to see how upset you would become, how far I could push you.”

In the moment when Prompto decides to bite out his throat, Verstael knees him hard in the stomach. Prompto is thrown off of him in a moment, and he stumbles back into a desk. He barely registers that Verstael is now pointing a gun at him. He can’t tell the difference between the room’s normal lighting and the red blare of the alarms. It all looks the same, all sounds the same. He can’t breathe. He can’t even think.

He _can_ recognize the sudden shift in the atmosphere, the black goo seeping down the walls and pooling on the floor. He notices it just as the daemons and MTs do, all of them swaying and screaming to the same beat. Ravus rounds the corner, out of breath but finally caught up with him. He stands back warily, sword drawn. It’s dripping with blood.

“Now, now,” Ardyn says, and he’s suddenly right there with his shit-eating grin, hands held wide and welcoming, swaying to the same beat as the daemons. “What’s this? Family shouldn’t fight one another!”

Prompto tackles him. He forces him down like he did with Verstael, although Ardyn is so much bigger than him. It doesn’t matter; Ardyn doesn’t draw a weapon, doesn’t fight back, only grins up at Prompto as his eyes bleed black and his skin turns grey.

Prompto goes in for the kill.

Ardyn’s body jerks and spasms under him as he crunches at the man’s throat, tearing through the collar of his shirt to rip apart skin and muscle, biting through arteries. Ichor bubbles up into his mouth and Prompto swallows it, drinking it down. _Scourge-eater,_ a voice in his mind that isn’t him thinks as he bites and chews, and now that he’s damaged the nerves enough it’s likely Ardyn can’t feel it anymore, he realizes the movement in his chest is laughter: _killing machine. Do what you’re good for, you monster. Eat. Consume. Bring this man to ruin, the way he’s ruined you._

_I don’t care where you came from,_ Noctis says cheerily, his face backlit by the sun as they sit on their school’s roof. _All that matters is that you’re here now._

_You belong with us._

Prompto’s chewing slows. Human tears spill out over his cheeks as he sniffles, Ardyn’s flesh still slimy against his tongue. His mouth falls open and a half-chewed bloody mess of muscle and tissue slides out, covering Prompto’s chin with blood and saliva, splashing against Ardyn’s once pristine white shirt.

Hands grab his shoulders and pull him back. Prompto lets himself pretend, just for a second, that Ravus is Noctis. He settles, his back to Ravus’s chest, and watches Verstael kick Ardyn’s corpse with his boot.

His eyes snap open. “My. Such brutality.” The Chancellor groans as he sits up, neck still spurting blood. Ravus’s grip tightens.

“Run now, little one,” he whispers fiercely. “You did my sister a favor once, and this situation has gone beyond such trifles as politics. I shall hold him off.”

“No,” Prompto says, even though he was itching to run just minutes ago. Now, looking down these two men, he needs answers, and he’s not leaving without them. “I’m sick of being in the dark.”

Ardyn laughs again, loud and cruel, as his neck heals. “Aren’t we all?”

"Why?" Prompto demands, ignoring the chaos around them. Ravus stays steady at his back; Prompto catches sight of his sword glinting beside them, ready to be brandished if need be. "Why did you do this? What good did it do you?"

“Why, dear Prompto, have you truly learned nothing? The clues were right there in front of you this whole time!” Ardyn says. He stays lounging on the floor, apparently content to remain there. Verstael huffs and grabs a tablet off of a broken desk, tapping away on it.

Prompto shoots the damn thing. “I know what you wanted. You wanted to see if I’d be a good spy. But you didn’t have to commit murder to do that. You didn’t have to torture me! So why?!”

“What poor manners,” Verstael says dryly. “Very well, son. I’ll indulge you.”

“I’m not your son!” Prompto says, and this time when he shoots at Verstael he doesn’t miss.

Verstael grunts as the bullet embeds itself between the seams of his armor. His arm lies limp as his shoulder bleeds. Prompto can’t help the surge of satisfaction and hunger that rushes through him at the sight of blood. “Rude!”

Ardyn cackles. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it, Vers?”

_“Enough!”_ Prompto screams. He shakes Ravus off, stepping away on unsteady legs. If he loses it again, the only people he wants to hurt are the two men in front of him; the people who have made his life hell for the past several weeks, who promised him an affectionate home and then broke him down and hollowed him out until there was nothing left. “Fucking tell me why, or I swear I’ll kill both of you!”

A faint line of ichor leaks out of the corner of Ardyn’s wide, smiling mouth. He flops back on the floor, reaching out a hand to touch Verstael’s boot. A pulse of purple magic curls up his leg, following along the lines of his armor until it finds the gunshot wound and seeps in. The blood stems, Verstael’s pained breathing slows, and then he’s standing up straight again as if nothing ever happened.

“Surely you can put some of it together,” Verstael grumbles, glaring. The alarms cut off, the noise and red glare gone. The lights flicker between dim and bright. There are small sounds floating through the halls, groans and whimpers and the slow creak of an MT's body swaying. The daemons are silent, now; Ardyn's face is still bleeding black, and there's an odd sort of power emanating from him.

The quite is enough that Prompto can notice the fog in his brain, coating his thoughts and desires in black ash. He had something to do, right? Somewhere he wanted to go. Someone he wanted to see.

The name is on the tip of his tongue, accompanied by blue irises and a wide, toothy smile, but it melts away like sugar.

“You…” Prompto coughs. “This has to do with the Emperor, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t have committed murder at a dinner held in his honor if it didn’t.”

“Bravo!” Ardyn stands suddenly, the motion too mechanic to be human, and Prompto wonders deliriously if he’s one of Verstael’s experiments, too. “His Radiance hasn’t quite been himself for some years, you see. He’s not particularly difficult to fool. And yet he’s grown, shall we say, _disillusioned_ with the work Verstael and I do. It was necessary for us to give him a reason to have faith in our beloved _pet_ project.”

Prompto ignores the stupid pun. “And destroying your facility does that how?”

Ravus moves behind him, the slow sound of a sword being sheathed accompanying the motion. “As it is, His Radiance shall see an unknown assailant, who presumably tried to assassinate him, destroyed by your obedient daemon pets. Overjoyed with the success of the training project, he shall approve more funding.”

Verstael smirks. Prompto has to stop himself from firing a shot right into his smarmy face. “Indeed. All we need do now is pick a body to disguise as the killer, and we’re in the clear.”

“The daemons fucked up the entire facility,” Prompto points out. “They killed everyone.”

“We’ll just say the assassin committed mass murder with a poisonous gas or some such. Falsifying death records isn’t particularly hard.”

His head is still swimming. The face is becoming clearer now, with words to give it color, words that say _you belong with us_ and _we never laughed at you._ “What does any of this have to do with me, though?” he asks in a tiny voice, raising his hands to show the bloody tips of his fingers. “Why _do_ this?”

“I heard about your existence some months ago. The prospect of seeing what a clone would be like if raised among humans intrigued me,” Verstael says with a shrug. “If ones such as yourself could be used as spy-work, it would revolutionize the Niflheimr intelligence-collecting technique. Our nation would be propelled to even greater heights. Unfortunately, you’ve proven quite a disappointment. You’re so easily fooled, over-emotional, not particularly bright…”

“I know!” Prompto screams. The face is clearer, now, but the fog keeps pulling him back under. His vision flashes red again. He feels something wet fall down his cheeks. A hand presses gently on the back of his neck, a warm, comforting weight.

"When it became clear you couldn't perform well under distress, I decided to continue down that avenue," Verstael continues. "See how much it would take to result in ego death. How much it would take to break you."

"I should _kill_ you!" Prompto snaps. The pressure on his neck becomes more oppressive, more violent. It feels like part of him is draining away. He struggles against it, but an arm wraps around his chest and holds him tight. The had gripping his gun flexes. The weapon falls to the ground, harmless. “You’re the worst father _ever!_ ”

“Come now, don’t be childish,” Verstael says. “I was never your father.”

The hand on the back of his neck tightens, and something escapes Prompto’s body along with his breath. When he slumps over, Ravus catches him.

It’s like a switch in his brain has flipped. He’s suddenly aware that it’s not normal to cry tears like motor oil, not normal to want to eat other people. Not normal to be so consistently, violently angry—at least, it isn’t for him. Prompto can see Noctis’s face clearly now, can hear his voice, and he struggles back to his feet as Ravus steadies his shoulders.

In the distance, three dogs start barking, the sound inexplicably loud. The air is getting hotter again. Ardyn whistles and peers down the hall. “I see Cerberus is finally awake. Such a tired thing. Prompto, dear, would you like to teach him to play fetch?”

His hands are trembling again. “I’m leaving,” he says to no one in particular.

“Ta ta, then. Say hello to His Highness for me,” Ardyn says, pleasant as ever. “We dearly hope you come back for the holidays.”

\---

Ravus hadn’t come with him.

When Prompto ran, no one pursued him except the occasional daemon and malfunctioning MT. He shoots those, blinded by his desire to get out and get out fast, and before he knows it he’s outside the facility. His phone is back in his room, dead, but he sure as hell isn’t running back to get it or any of his other junk. Screw that stuff. His life is more important.

The guards around the garage are all dead or dying, the cackling of daemons rising high in the night air. Prompto catches sight of Barbarus hanging around on the top of the building, body unnaturally still in the pale moonlight. A fire has broken out somewhere in the distance. When he finds the snowmobile, polished and untouched since he got here ages ago, he jumps on and and rides off. He doesn’t look back.

The sky above is an endless expanse of stars, the galaxy stretching far across it in waves of milky blue and purple. The trees, tall and restless, appear black under the wash of light from the moon. The air is cold in Prompto’s mouth. As the First Magitek Production Facility gets farther and farther away, Prompto starts shivering. His long sleeve shirt and pants aren’t nearly enough to protect him from the subzero temperatures. His teeth clatter; his eyes squint. Even at night, the snow is blinding, white and white and white as far as the eye can see, covering the valleys and mountains alike.

Now that he’s away from the bright spotlights surrounding the facility, he can see the daemons more clearly. They’re bolder, slinking out from behind trees and cabins, the galvanades glowing bright, smoldering purple in the darkness. He avoids them as best he can, giving them a wide berth. They watch mockingly, salivating but unwilling to charge him, as if something—or someone—told them that Prompto Argentum is not for eating.

What was the point of all this? What has he learned? Prompto has always tried to learn from his past mistakes. Take poor care of yourself, it’ll show in your body and make you self-conscious. Lesson: exercise and eat properly. Fail to talk to anyone, and you won’t have any friends. Lesson: just go up and say hi. This is how he’s lived his life thus far. But how can he turn _this_ into a lesson? How can he turn torture and abuse and horrible, nasty memories into morals to make his life better, to make _himself_ better?

Maybe there’s something in here about his family. _Don’t be like your adoptive parents, always running off and leaving their son on his own._ But don’t be like Verstael, either. He guesses he might be able to turn that into a guideline for proper behavior, but—

That would require him to think about it. All of it. And he really doesn’t want to.

Instead he rides, waves of anger and shame and indescribable sadness crashing over him. This would’ve been easier without him. Ardyn and Verstael’s plan would have gone off perfectly fine if they’d just released the damn daemons themselves. Instead they just had to involve him, to destroy the illusion that anyone could ever care about him unconditionally. That he had someone waiting for him the way Noctis has His Majesty, the way Gladio has Clarus, and the way Ignis has his uncle. Verstael could have at least let him dream.

The tears welling up in his eyes are blurring his vision, and the lump in his throat makes it hard to breathe, but Prompto doesn’t stop until his snowmobile runs out of gas. By now he’s far enough that he can’t see the facility anymore, just an endless expanse of white snow and black trees and mountains stretching tall. It’s almost serene. Prompto leans against the trunk of a pine tree, lets his head fall back against the bark, and waits.

For what, he has no idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;-; oh prompto...  
> one more chapter to go!


	10. Unconditional

There’s something.

Prompto must have fallen asleep standing up, because that’s the position he’s in when he’s roused back into consciousness. At first, he can't tell what woke him, but then he hears it again—the low rustle of feet moving through snow, disturbing the underbrush. Prompto slides his gun out of its holster, breaths coming in short, and holds his ground. The moon has slid behind the clouds, and it’s pitch black. With only starlight to guide him, Prompto catches sight of the intruder in his peripheral vision a few yards away. As the figure approaches—tall, near silent, purposeful—he slows his breathing and waits.

Just as the figure steps within point blank range, hand resting on the sheath of a sword tucked at their side, Prompto leaps out and aims in one swift movement. He's very, very happy he hadn't actually pulled the trigger when he recognizes the face.

"Argentum?" Cor the Immortal says, stepping forwards warily. "It's only me. Stand down."

"...yeah," Prompto mutters, dropping his gun. His vision is getting fuzzy at the edges. He doesn't know if he's hallucinating or not, if this is another one of Verstael's tricks, but at this point, he doesn't care. Everything twinkles as the moon peeks out from behind the clouds, and Prompto focuses on the way the mountain valley shimmers as Cor pats him down, checking for injuries. Breathlessly, Prompto raises his hands, tugging the glove off of them. Cor inspects his bloody fingers with a frown.

"Happened a while ago," Prompto says. "I keep messin' 'em up, though."

"Let's go," Cor says slowly, and Prompto realizes he's been talking for several minutes now. "Can you walk?"

"'Course I can. 'm not _useless_ ," Prompto spits, and walks.

There's a helicopter pretty far away from where they were—or maybe it's not so far, and Prompto is just slow and dragging his feet. He refuses to let Cor carry him, though. He'll walk on his own for now. He'll make it home at least part of the way under his own strength. It's the least he can do with his broken, beaten body. With his fragmented mind.

It's the least he can do to prove he still has a place at Noctis's side.

By the time they get to the helicopter, Prompto is barely conscious, stumbling and shivering. Cor drags him inside, lies him down, and strips him. Belatedly, Prompto realizes his clothes are wet, probably from the snow. That doesn’t change the flashes of memory, of Verstael’s blade slicing through his skin, and he shoves weakly at Cor’s hands until he’s done and Prompto is bundled up in fresh, dry clothes. Then Cor barks out an order, and the helicopter rises into the air. They fly almost as high as the mountain peaks. Prompto’s throat dries up as he looks back at the facility, a bright, metallic gleam among the snow and trees, with smoke rising above it. It feels like a part of him got left behind there, forever trapped within those walls. Something like innocence, or trust, ripped out of his chest, leaving behind a gaping wound that will never heal.

Cor pats him on the shoulder. “Try to get some sleep. It’ll be a while before he make it back to Lucis.”

“How’d you know?” Prompto asks abruptly. “Where I was, I mean.”

“His Highness informed us of what happened,” Cor explains. He grabs Prompto and maneuvers him down onto a pile of blankets on the cold leather seats. “It wasn’t difficult to track Besithia down. He’s been working in the same facility for nearly twenty years.”

“I see,” Prompto says, his throat seizing up. “So Noct…?”

“Once you stopped communicating with him, His Highness insisted that rescuing you become our top priority. He put together quite an impressive speech for the Council. The operation itself naturally took some time to prepare. My apologies for being so late.”

“‘s fine,” Prompto says, because although it’s most certainly _not_ fine, he has no one to blame but himself. Maybe Verstael deserves some blame, but if Prompto hadn’t been so stupid he never would have been able to manipulate him in the first place.

It’s all his fault.

Cor nods, then turns to the pilot. “Is anyone pursuing us?”

“No, sir. We’ve got a clear shot to the Niflheim-Tenebrae border. We’ll be arriving in just under six hours.”

“Good. Keep monitoring the radar. I don’t trust the Nifs not to launch a sneak attack when they think we aren’t looking.”

“They won’t,” Prompto says weakly. His eyelids are growing heavy, a stinging sensation tingling behind them. He curls up further, his arms cushioning his head, and lets out a deep breath. “They got what they wanted from me.”

Cor gives him a searching expression. “Maybe so. But there’s no downside to being careful.”

Prompto snorts, his vision growing dark. “Whatever you say.”

He wakes up again just as they’re landing. The mountains gone now. They touch down in wide tundra, white and flat and quiet. There’s an off-road vehicle waiting for them in the snow. In the far distance, Prompto hears the cackling of daemons, and reaches for his gun.

Cor knocks his hand away. “Quit that. You’re in no condition to fight.”

Prompto lowers his gun, but keeps it at the ready in case he needs it anyway.

The next few hours are spent laying down in the back of the car with Cor as their pilot becomes their driver. He’s got long hair with braids in it, and a uniform that’s not quite Crownsguard. The comforting rumble of the engine is almost enough to overcome the paranoia that they’re going to be attacked, that Verstael will change his mind and send someone (Ardyn? The daemons? _Ravus?_ ) after them, and send him right off to sleep, head resting against Cor the Immortal’s thigh.

“There you are,” Cor says, patting his shoulder. Prompto’s fingers hurt.

\---

When he sees Insomnia, it’s like nothing has changed. The city stands just as tall as it used to, silver and gleaming and dotted with color. It’s nothing like the cold, distant glimpse he got of Gralea. Cor expedites his way through the Wall, and then before he knows it he’s in the Citadel. The first and only time he’d ever traveled here before was for a school field trip in middle school; Noctis had acted bored, but acquiesced to their teacher’s requests and told them all a little about what it was like to grow up in a palace.

_“It’s big and busy, but it’s nice. I like it.”_

He must have changed his mind, to be so eager to move out just a few years later. Now, Prompto thinks he understands why. The guards give him shifty glares even as he’s escorted by the Marshal. There’s a constant stream of people shuffling around him. His crowd anxiety is at an all time high, especially after spending the past few weeks in the equally massive but comparatively sparsely populated First Magitek Production Facility. Beyond all of that, the Citadel is massive, high ceilings and hallways that echo every noise, every word and footstep and shuffle of clothing. By the time Prompto is standing in front of the Crownsguard offices, he’s practically shaking.

Cor gives him a carefully neutral look. “We have to question you now. It’s standard procedure, nothing to be worried about.”

“Yeah, sure,” Prompto says. The door in front of him is dark wood, heavy and intimidating. “I get it.”

“I’ll handle the first part, but two other officers will have to cross-reference our interview. Just answer honestly, and it’ll be over before you know it.”

Prompto swallows hard. “I’m an open book.”

He does his absolute best not to look suspicious. He tells Cor about the letter, about his motivations, about the trip. He tells him about the banquet and the daemon experiments and the murders. Without even meaning to, he leaves out the MTs. He knows he should be honest, but he also knows Cor is sworn to protect Noctis above all else. There’s always the chance he’ll determine Prompto Argentum, barely-human MT clone, is a threat, and he’ll never see Noctis again. After months of dreaming of coming home and apologizing, the thought is more than he can take.

He stumbles over his words, is sure his nervousness is apparent, but he hopes Cor just assumes it’s because he’s a little shaken and not because he’s hiding a horrible, horrible secret.

Then Cor asks, “did you suffer any substantial injuries during your stay in Niflheim?”

Prompto freezes. It’s the first question he’s been asked that wasn’t _“did you reveal any Insomnian intelligence to your father”_ or _“were you privy to any military secrets while you were at the Magitek Facility?”_ The first question that asks earnestly after his health, and isn’t just to make sure he isn’t a threat. “Huh?”

Cor glances downwards, towards Prompto’s folded hands on the table. He carefully moves them into his lap, where they’ll be out of sight. “Nothing… substantial.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cor sighs. It’s an almost imperceptible sound, but Prompto feels the disappointment in it like a shot to the heart. Something stronger, some deep-rooted desire to forget, some _fear,_ keeps him from caving in and confessing everything.

“Would you consent to a medical examination?”

“No, sir.”

Cor sighs. “Alright. I can’t force you. But if your hands or any other injuries you’re hiding impact your ability to train, you’ll be benched indefinitely until you recover.”

That’s fine. He can still hold a gun. He’ll just have to hide his winces from now on. “I understand, sir.”

After Cor leaves, another man comes in. He’s dressed in a Kingsglaive uniform, with a stern face and rough voice. He asks all the same questions except for the one about Prompto’s injuries, then leaves. Once he’s gone, Gladio’s dad comes in, and seeing him makes Prompto’s stomach churn as he thinks about how Gladio and Ignis and Noctis probably already know he’s back in the city. They must be furious that he hasn’t contacted them yet.

That is, is they still want him.

“It’s good to have you home safe, Prompto,” Clarus says as they both stand, the questioning finally over. Prompto’s back pops as he stretches. It’s been hours. “Gladiolus was very worried about you.”

“Good to hear,” Prompto says, because he doesn’t think ‘he shouldn’t have worried about someone like me’ will cut it.

Cor escorts him out of the Citadel with an order to attend a session or several dozen with a Crown certified therapist, free of charge, and a summons to return tomorrow for an audience with the King. Noctis’s father.

Holy shit.

Prompto is driven home by a Crownsguard who doesn’t talk to him, then deposited on his front door step like a package being delivered. The lights aren’t on. Prompto groans when he realizes he left his keys back in Gralea, and breaks in through the back window that’s always been a little loose. He writes himself a reminder to call a locksmith to get the lock replaced tomorrow.

The house is just as he left it, albeit in need of a dusting. He goes about cleaning, looking over each room as he passes it—the pale yellow walls of the living room, the hallway, perpetually dark from the lack of an overhead light, the kitchen, stocked with only a few containers of food, and a bunch of rotten fruit that needs to be tossed. His bedroom is last, the walls covered with photos of him and Noct and Ignis and Gladio. There aren’t any of his adoptive parents. They’re never around long enough for him to take a picture.

When there’s truly nothing left for him to do, he slumps down on the couch and sighs. His phone’s gone. He can’t call Noctis. And even if he could, should he even want to? Cor said that Noctis is the reason he got picked up in the first place, but that doesn’t mean the prince wants to see him. Maybe Cor and Clarus and Drautos and everyone have decided he’s a security risk. If so, that’s fine. It’ll kill Prompto, but he’d do anything to protect Noct. Anything at all.

Of course, all those thoughts are just lip service to cover up the fact that even though the only reason he survived that place was so he could see Noct, and now he’s getting cold feet. He’s hopeless, as always.

The clock in the living room ticks on. Prompto puts his head in his hands and cries.

\---

The next day, a Crownsguard arrives at his house to drive him to the Citadel. Prompto is dressed in the nicest clothes he has, a hand-me-down old suit that his adoptive father had given him years ago. It reminds him of the black and red suit Verstael had given him. By the time he’s waved through security and escorted deeper into the Citadel than he’s ever been, his palms are slicked in sweat.

The guards take him past the throne room and up to an unassuming door a few hallways down. A guard opens it for him. Confused, Prompto steps inside, wringing his hands. Maybe this is just a waiting room. His Majesty is probably very busy, and Prompto is a nobody. He likely doesn’t have time for this at all.

Prompto is so busy marveling at the soft white and gold wallpaper, the chandelier hanging delicately from the ceiling, and the plush black carpet (so warm and _inviting,_ not at all like the cold cruelty painting Verstael’s labs) that he doesn’t notice the tiered platter of sandwiches and cakes on a table in the center of the room, nor the man sitting on a nearby sofa. When he sets his tea down on a platter, it makes a soft _clink_ that activates Prompto’s fight or flight instinct.

He’s caught in between drawing his gun and running when the King raises a hand, signalling for him to calm down. His smile is the same as Noctis’s. “Prompto Argentum, is it? Please, come and sit with me.”

Prompto’s throat goes completely dry. “Sir—I mean, Your Majesty, I don’t think I’m allowed to, uh, do that.”

The King’s eyes crinkle kindly. “Do what, precisely?”

“Uh. Sit in your… kingly… presence…?”

His Majesty chuckles. "Nonsense. I'm asking you to sit, so you can sit. Unless you prefer to stay standing, that is."

"Um, no, I'm." Prompto slowly lowers himself onto a sofa opposite the King. His knees feel like jelly. "I'm good. To sit, I mean."

"Excellent." King Regis sips at his tea again. "Now, I understand that you've already been questioned by Cor, Clarus, and Captain Drautos, but I'd like to do some questioning of my own, if that's alright with you."

Prompto nods. He bites his lip, inadvertently ripping off some of the skin. The blood welling up is coppery and hot.

Regis smiles awkwardly. “It's alright, Prompto. You're not in any trouble.”

“Right. Your Majesty,” Prompto says. His knuckles are burning white, his fingertips pulsing with not-pain as he clenches his hands into fists in his lap. The atmosphere of the room suddenly feels suffocating. He tries his very best not to compare the situation to that dinner, with the Emperor and Ardyn and Verstael, and fails.

Regis seems to pick up on his discomfort. He leans away. “I merely wanted to ask after your health. Are you feeling alright?”

“...Your Majesty?”

“Are you alright?” Regis asks again. “I heard from Cor that you refused a medical examination. Are you in any pain?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Prompto says. He shifts around, the sensation of eyes on him too much like Iedolas’s leering gaze for comfort. “Your Majesty, I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve got a lot to take care of at home.” A lie. “Can I go, please?”

Regis gives him a searching look. “Prompto, please. You are my son’s dearest friend.” _Dearest friend._ Dearest _friend._ “You’ve been through quite an ordeal. Even if you don’t feel that a medical check up is necessary, I believe you’d do well with the services of a therapist. As a Crownsguard trainee, you have full access to the Citadel’s mental health facilities.”

“That’s…” He’s right. Prompto knows he’s right. But seeing a therapist would require him to talk about it, about everything, and he really, really doesn’t want to. “I’ll check it out, Your Majesty.”

Another lie. He’s really doing great today, isn’t he.

“Alright. But I think I should let you know that neither Cor, Clarus, nor Titus found anything faulty or suspicious in your testimony,” Regis says, picking up his tea again. The air of the room seems to return suddenly, finally allowing Prompto to take in a deep breath. “You’re not in any kind of legal trouble.”

“Thank you,” Prompto says. He stands on shaky knees, giving a short bow to the King. As he walks stiffly towards the door, he tries not to think of what he’s doing as running. “That’s… that’s nice to hear.”

“Noctis has been very anxious to see you,” Regis says softly. “You’re very important to him, Prompto. I hope you know that.”

“I know,” he replies in a pathetically small voice. “I know.”

When he leaves the Citadel, he means to ask the Crownsguard to drive him to Noctis’s apartment. Instead, the words that come out of his mouth are a request to go straight home. When he gets inside, he sits down on the couch, leans back into the cushions, and studies the ceiling.

\---

He’s drifting off again, so, so tired from everything that’s happened, when someone violently bangs on his door. It takes Prompto a moment to realize he’s not imagining it, and even longer to drag his way over to the door to look out the peephole.

He sees black hair. Pale skin. Blue eyes.

Prompto throws the door open.

Gladio and Ignis are standing behind Noctis, holding shopping bags in their hands, but Prompto barely has time to say hello before Noctis is barrelling into him. He’s warm and solid and familiar, but the touch is too much, too much like Verstael’s hugs full of fake affection, too much like Ravus’s body curled up next to him at night, and Prompto very frantically tries to disentangle Noctis’s limbs from his torso.

Luckily, Noctis takes the hint and backs off. The relief on his face is clearer than day. “Prom! Are you alright? Why didn’t you text me? What the hell _happened?”_

Prompto’s head is dizzy. He’d answered questions for hours yesterday, and he feels like his brain has turned to mush. He can hardly make sense of what Noctis is saying, let alone give him a proper response.

Ignis comes to the rescue. “Perhaps we should save the questioning for later, Highness. Prompto, may we come in?”

“Sure,” Prompto says dazedly, opening the door wider. He’s glad for his fit of spontaneous cleaning, as he has no reason to be embarrassed as the prince of Lucis and his retainers remove their shoes and shuffle into his kitchen. Gladio and Ignis set their bags down on the counter, and from them produce several containers of fruit, spinach, lettuce, vegetables, frozen meat, a bag of chips, soda, and a jug of juice.

“Forgive our intrusion, but we thought you might be in need of some groceries,” Ignis says.

“Yeah, you were gone for a pretty long time. Figured you’d have to throw everything in your fridge out,” Gladio adds.

“Yeah,” Prompto replies, his hands resting uncomfortably in his pockets. He doesn’t want them to see his bandages. They’ll only worry, and he doesn’t deserve their concern.

“That’s all you have to say? ‘Yeah?’” Noctis almost-shouts, and Prompto winces. Ignis rests a hand on Noctis’s shoulder. He takes a deep breath, and the next time he speaks, it’s in a more respectable volume. “Prom, you were gone for four months. Do you have any idea how worried we were?”

“I’m sorry,” Prompto says automatically.

“Come on, Noct, chill,” Gladio says, putting away a box of strawberries in the fridge. “Hey Prompto, where do your non refrigeratable fruits go?”

“The bowl on the counter,” Prompto says. His hands are starting to shake.

“Cool, thanks.”

“Are we seriously going to ignore the fact that Prom was MIA for _four months?!”_ Noctis says, tossing his hands about. “Cor won’t tell me anything. Dad won’t tell me anything! Prom, please, I have to know. What happened?” Noctis looks at him so imploringly, Prompto is on the verge of breaking and telling him everything. Then Ignis steps in.

“Noctis, calm down,” Ignis says. “Whatever happened, I am sure Prompto would have contacted you if he was able to. And given that the Marshal had to extract him from enemy territory, I doubt his stay in Niflheim was a pleasant one. Regardless, you are not entitled to that information unless Prompto decides to share it with you.” Ignis smiles at Prompto, and he feels almost at ease. It’s enough to justify taking his now thoroughly sweaty palms out of his pockets.

Noctis’s shoulders sag. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I’m just… I’m just worried again.”

“No problem,” Prompto says, hoping his voice isn’t shaking as badly as he thinks it is. “You guys wanna watch a movie?”

“Sure,” Noctis says, and they convene in the living room. Prompto grabs a random shitty horror movie off the shelf, tosses it into the DVD player, and falls back on the couch. Noctis and Ignis take the other seats while Gladio leans back on the floor. They get through thirty minutes of bad acting and worse special effects before Noctis says, “wanna have some popcorn?”

“I don’t think I have any,” Prompto says.

“We bought chips,” Gladio says, distracted by a woman on screen getting cut up with a chainsaw. “What the hell. Did they use ketchup for the blood effects?”

“Chips sound good,” Prompto says. Noctis gets up. Prompto shifts back, hands curled into loose fists in his lap, and he’s so busy throwing himself headfirst into the movie that he doesn’t notice Noctis’s hand reaching for his own until it’s too late.

The moment Noctis squeezes his fingers and tries to pull him up, Prompto screams. It’s visceral, reactionary, hoarse from hours and hours of talking, and even though Prompto shuts it off as quickly as he can the damage has already been done. Noctis stumbles back, Ignis and Gladio are on him in an instant, and his nail beds feel like they’re on fire underneath his bandages.

Ignis is the one to take his hands by the palms, keeping away from his fingertips, and examines his bandages. They aren't bleeding, but with how hot they feel Prompto is surprised they aren't singed.

"May I?" Ignis asks, but Prompto's already nodding. The bandages need to be changed soon anyway, or maybe removed entirely, and it's not like hiding things from his friends worked out well the last time. Ignis unravels the bandages on the thumb of his right hand, then continues until all his fingers are bare, puffy and red and covered in half-formed, white nails.

Gladio looks over them with sharp eyes. "This wasn't an accident."

"No," Prompto answers, even though Gladio wasn't asking.

"Denailing is a method of torture," he continues.

"Yeah," Prompto agrees.

They stay there in silence for a few minutes. The house is warm, so much warmer than Niflheim, and Prompto feels like he's burning up under the oppressive heat. The movie continues to play on the screen, unbothered by the change in the room's mood.

"Did you receive a medical examination when you arrived at the Citadel?" Ignis asks.

"No. I didn't want it and they couldn't force me," Prompto says.

"I really think you should—"

" _No_ ," Prompto says, shocking himself with how hard his voice sounds. "I said I didn't want one, so I'm not getting one."

Ignis doesn't look pleased at that—none of them look pleased—but Prompto doesn't cave. A lifetime ago, he would have bent over backwards to make those looks of unease and concern go away, but maybe he's a different person now. Maybe Verstael made him a different person.

But doesn't that mean Prompto is letting him win?

"I'll buy some pain meds tomorrow," he says as a compromise. "And antiseptic. I already know how to treat them on my own."

"As you say," Ignis says.

Noctis, who's been remarkably quiet up til now, says, "is anyone else tired? I'm tired."

Prompto swallows heavily. "It's late. Spend the night?"

They do. Ignis and Gladio take the room that technically belongs to Prompto's adoptive parents, which is barren and essentially a guest room, while Noctis follows Prompto to his bedroom. He leans against the counter in the bathroom while Prompto brushes his teeth.

Noctis clears his throat. "Sorry I was so pushy today."

"'s fine."

"It's not. I made you uncomfortable and… and I hurt you. I'm sorry."

_You didn't hurt me,_ Prompto thinks. "Dude, I said it was fine. Don't worry about it."

Noctis nods, but he's still worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. "You need help with that?"

Prompto considers the throbbing in his fingers, the way Ravus had brushed his teeth and hair and washed him for two weeks after the incident. "No."

"Okay."

They climb into bed. Prompto stays at arm's length, facing Noctis. It's awkward, but he can't turn his back on him. If he does, his brain might morph Noctis into Ravus, and his bedroom into the facility, and the part of him that never left will take over completely.

His eyes tear up unexpectedly. In the pale moonlight brightening up the room, everything turns the same color as it had been in the tundra, the same white as the snow, the same white as Barbarus's fur. But no matter how hard he squints, Noctis's hair is still black instead of platinum blonde.

"Hey," Noctis whispers, reaching out a hand.

"Hey," Prompto whispers back, taking it.

"I… I love you unconditionally." With this confession, said with the weight of years of friendship, Noctis doesn’t let his eyes leave Prompto’s. "We all do. Me and Gladio and Ignis, I mean. You don't need to go running around trying to find your place, because it's right here. Okay?"

"What if I have more secrets?" Prompto whispers, resisting the urge to rub his blunt fingertips at the tattoo under his wristband. "What if there's more things I haven't told you? Worse things?"

"I don't care," Noctis declares with the confidence of someone who has never seen a baby trapped in a test tube, its mouth open in a silent scream. Who has never doubted his own humanity. "I could never hate you, Prom."

"Right back atcha," he says. His attempt at a humorous tone falls flat. When he finally sleeps, he doesn't dream.

\---

Three months later, they're playing a game in Noctis's apartment. The volume is set on low, and although Prompto isn't _trying_ to listen in he still overhears Ignis and Gladio talking to each other in the kitchen. It's completely innocuous—something about Noctis's upcoming training schedule—but his stomach still churns with guilt over eavesdropping on his friends. The automatic listening in is something he’s trying to work on in therapy, but it’s a slow, slow process. At the very least, he’s been learning ways to cope with his anxiety and paranoia. It’s better than nothing, but he’s got a long way to go.

There's a low scratching sound at the door that has Prompto jumping, eyes wide, hands instinctively going for a holster that isn't there. Noctis says a calming word as Ignis opens the door, revealing a black dog that trots in happily, a notebook tucked in his mouth.

"Umbra," Noctis says, happy in his muted, I'm-pretending-I-don't-care-but-I'm-secretly-thrilled type of way. Umbra, Pryna's brother, a messenger under the care of Lady Lunafreya. Prompto wonders if his brain is filing away that information for later use, storing it neatly in a long list of things he knows, many of them things he’d rather forget.

Noctis takes the notebook from Umbra's mouth immediately, ignoring their game, and Prompto pulls out his new phone to mess around while his friend reads. When Noctis lets out a confused "huh?" he turns to look.

There’s a letter tucked in the cover of the book. "It's addressed to you," Noctis says, and Prompto's stomach drops through the floor.

He takes the letter anyway, hands trembling, and tears it open. He doesn't check the back to see if there's a sender, Noctis would have thrown it out without a word if it was from Verstael. The handwriting is unfamiliar, but the words themselves are not.

_To Prompto Argentum,_

_Are you faring well? I can only hope so. My access to intelligence reports from Lucis is limited, so I have no way of assessing the state of your recovery. I can only have faith that Lunafreya's messenger will see this letter to you safely._

_Writing to you in this manner is selfish, and may do more harm than good, and yet I cannot stop myself. It has been a long time since I felt the need to care for another beyond my dear sister. I still do not know what came over me in that place. By all manner of logic, I should hate you for all your affiliations with Lucis and Prince Noctis. And yet, when I think of you, it is with the same sense of exhausting, yet sincere responsibility I feel towards my sister._

_I do not expect any response from you, either to update me on your status or to converse further. These are merely the words of a man with too much anger and too little control, attempting to grasp at whatever he can think of as weaker than him. In fact, I believe I would prefer it if you did not write back. Let us leave the past to the past, and let our wounds fester and rot._

_Take care, little one. Be safe, as much as one can be in such a world as this one._

_Fester and rot_ , Prompto thinks, scratching at his wristband. Fester and rot, like all those bodies piled up at the First Magitek Production Facility. Fester and rot, like the thousands and thousands of MTs cut down in the war. Fester and rot like Ravus, and Lunafreya, and his fingers and Noctis's back and all their other wounds that have cut far too deep to ever heal.

"That doesn't look like Luna's handwriting," Noctis says, checking the envelope. It's bare except for Prompto's name, written in cursive script. "Who's it from?"

"No one important," Prompto says, and crushes the letter in his fist.

\---

(When he finally tells them, ages later, it’s only because he has no other option. He brandishes his barcode like a weapon, the tattoo covered in grime and blood. Noctis puts his hand on his shoulder and smiles at him. Tells him that he belongs with more than just words.

His wounds still hurt, but they’ve long since scarred over, and Prompto is finally able to say he’s okay.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's done!!  
> the ending was originally considerably less happy, but i couldn't just... leave it like this. prompto deserves to recover.  
> also the fact that i just slightly missed 50k has me irritated but... i'm not gonna add an extra hundred or so words for no reason...  
> thanks to everyone who read this fic, left kudos, comments, etc etc! without your support i'm not sure i would have finished this :') thank you so much!!


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